We’ve all heard about probiotics, but what have you heard about prebiotics?
In this episode of the Love Your Gut Podcast, I talk to Kara Landau about everything that you, as a consumer, need to know about prebiotics, why they’re a hot topic at the moment, whether or not you need to be taking a prebiotic supplement, and diversity versus quantity.
Kara Landau is a prebiotic gut health expert, author, dietician, innovator, and presenter. She is the author of The Clean Separation, which aims to help young adults feel empowered through the power of nutrition.
Topics Covered in This Episode:
- [02:27] What is a prebiotic?
- [05:42] The misconceptions around prebiotics.
- [09:25] The cost of prebiotics.
- [15:17] Is more better?
- [25:17] Incorporating foods as a lifestyle.
- [27:35] Do you need a prebiotic?
- [34:24] Diversity for your gut bugs.
- [36:27] What is Kara’s favorite way to love her gut?
If this episode has been helpful, hit me up on Instagram, and tell me about your experience!
Recommendations:
- Resistant starches: resistant potato starch, green banana flour, whole foods.
- Polyphenolic prebiotics: kiwi fruit powder.
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Quotes:
- “Often, prebiotics are fiber, but not all prebiotics are fiber and not all fibers are prebiotic.”
- “Feed your gut so that your body can look after itself.”
- “Stress affects everything.”
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TRANSCRIPTION:
SPEAKERS
Dr. Heather Finley, Kara Landau
Kara Landau 00:00
And then as you said, they want to avoid prebiotic, so they’re scared of this nutrient, when really, it’s about making sure that you have a mix. And so to the second part of your question, when I say a mix, it’s not just about having a mix of the types of soluble fibers, it’s about having a mix of resistant starches are insoluble fibers which are not the prebiotic, but they help move the soluble fibers through your system so that you don’t end up getting those negative digestive discomfort effects.
Dr. Heather Finley 00:32
Hey, welcome to the love your gut podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Heather Finley, I know what you’re thinking, how am I supposed to love my gut when all it does is hold me back. I thought the same thing before I found my own relief from my own gut health issues. I dedicated my life to getting to the bottom of my own gut issues, so I can help women just like you transform theirs. Now I’m here to guide you through your own gut health journey. We do this through identifying your root causes and making sustainable and transformational changes. As a result, you can unleash your true potential. My goal is to empower you with the information and tools you need to love your guts. So it loves you back right here on this podcast. Welcome back to the next episode of The Love Your Podcast. Today, I’m joined by Kara and I’m so excited for you guys to meet her you probably actually already have met her before. We’ve done various Instagram lives and other different collaborations together. So she might not be a stranger to you. But she’s never been on the podcast. So today we’re going to be talking all about prebiotics and some of the hot topics related to prebiotics that are going around the Instagram and social media world. And she’s here to debunk all the myths and give us the real facts. So, Carol, welcome to the podcast.
Kara Landau 01:55
Thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Yes, well,
Dr. Heather Finley 01:59
obviously prebiotics are becoming a very popular hot topic. You see lots of influencers and companies promoting prebiotics. And for good reason. prebiotics are obviously very beneficial for gut health. But there’s starting to become lots of false advertising. And so that’s really what this episode is going to going to do is tell people what’s true and what’s not. So if someone’s listening, and they’re like, I don’t know what a prebiotic is, can you just briefly tell people what’s a prebiotic and maybe share the difference between like fiber and prebiotics and how they go together?
Kara Landau 02:40
Sure, yeah. When we say prebiotic, people think that we’re just making a mistake, and we’re trying to say prebiotic prebiotics. In a simplistic term, people often think of prebiotics as the fuel or the nourishment for probiotics. But what we’re finding now is that really prebiotics can be any ingredient or products that can cause a change in the gut bacteria that can lead to a health benefit. So that’s a really important part that there’s an after effect, that’s going to be beneficial to our health and well being. And often prebiotics are fiber. But not all prebiotics are fiber. And not all fibers are prebiotic, meaning when you consume an insoluble fiber, so what you often people often think of as like inside a brand flake, and that actually is not prebiotic in nature. It’s definitely valuable for your digest. And that helps move some of the other types of prebiotics down further into your gut where they then can be utilized by the gut bacteria and cementing cause those short chain fatty acids and all benefits that come with that, but they’re not themselves a prebiotic, whereas the soluble fibers and then the third missing fiber, as I like to call it is resistant starch is another type of prebiotic that acts very similar to a fiber and that also can be utilized by the gut bacteria. Those are all prebiotics. And then interestingly enough, and we won’t go too into it today, but there’s also the science around poly phenols, and how they can have prebiotic benefits. So for people that have sensitive tummies and want to get these prebiotic benefits and and really nourish their gut health, they actually can now we’ve found that you can use other nutrients and ingredients such as these poly phenols to to lead to the same benefits as if you had the prebiotic fibers or the resistant starches. So that’s really exciting to watch and to be able to utilize.
Dr. Heather Finley 04:46
Yeah, in the world. I feel like of prebiotics, resistant starch poly phenols like we’re learning new things every day, which is so exciting. And yeah, for those of you that are curious about poly phenols I actually have another episode on that so you can go Go back a couple episodes and listen to that if you’re curious kind of the mechanism of what they do and how they work. So that is there for you. But I think it’s helpful to break down the difference because like you said, a lot of times people think prebiotic is a probiotic, or that we’re just saying the word wrong. And also, I think a lot of times people think that digestive health is just about probiotics. And I need to go buy the most expensive probiotic on the market to fix my gut. And the reality is, prebiotics are kind of where it’s at, in a lot of ways. So Kara, why don’t you tell us? What are some of the misconceptions that we’re seeing right now as it comes as it relates to prebiotics? What are some of the things that maybe we’re being told on the internet or other places that are not necessarily true?
Kara Landau 05:54
Oh, there’s so many I don’t know where to start. So it’s been quite interesting to watch in Ulan is a prebiotic that’s very well researched. And people, you can often find it as chicory root in Ulan as Agave in Ulan badru. Some added to it and those would be the three densest sources that they extract anyone from. And what we’re finding is that people are trying to say that a certain type of Indian be it that it is sourced from Europe, rather than from another country, or that it is from the agave plant, rather than from the chicory root or the Jerusalem artichoke, that somehow it is more premium. And therefore it can be charged to consumers at a much, much higher price. And that it will somehow have significantly better impacts on your gut health, then if you consumed something from a different country, or from or from a different source. And I guess what, what we really know is that a lot of the science has actually been performed on chicory root, but really, it’s just around the chain length of the inulin. And we don’t need to go like too deep into everything today. But in ulan, when extracted can have a different chain length of carbohydrate molecules in there. And the longer chain link is often more well tolerated than the shorter chain. But when it comes to what you find on a label, and this is more so on food products than in supplements, because I feel like in supplements, you often see people will call out fructose oligosaccharides, FOS, or oligo fructose people might have seen and that is, that is the short chain in your whereas in a food product, people will just try chicory root fiber, or insulin on the product, when it’s you know, a lot of high fiber, low carb kind of products or high protein, low carb products would have this as an ingredient. And, and so some people don’t really understand why some products they tolerate significantly more or better than others. And it can really just come down to the chain, as an example. But you can get this long chain in your hand from chicory root from Jerusalem arbitrary, and not just from agave. So that’s really important for people to know. And the country that it’s made is not the determinant of the chain link. Or the quality I, some people might prefer that it comes from an organic source or from a non genetically modified source. And that’s great. And basically all these ingredients typically are non genetically modified anyway. And so I just think it’s really important for people to understand those, you know, those little differences between the ingredients and the chain length, as opposed to just listening to someone online try to split that something is better and cherry picking one piece of science to try to that what they’re trying to sell with the premium. Yeah,
Dr. Heather Finley 08:57
well, I was watching your Instagram stories the other day. And if you guys don’t follow her, she is the prebiotic dietitian on Instagram for good reason, because she knows everything there is to know about prebiotics. But you were breaking down the cost and the different costs of each prebiotic and sourcing and I thought that that was so interesting. So let’s go into that just kind of because I think it is true. A lot of times we see a product and we’re like, Oh, it’s $70 It must be amazing. Like this is going to be life changing, versus something that’s 15 or 20 it could literally be the exact same thing. Just the marketing is different. And so why don’t we go into that like let’s break down some of the costs, really and how this can what matters and what doesn’t.
Kara Landau 09:51
With pleasure and for anyone that knows I previously had a food company which is why I was quite food and supplement I put food it’s not a lie. today so I’m happy to talk about this. Everyone knows I’m not affiliated with anything. I’m not trying to sell anything. But I shared some of the pricing of ingredients like organic Jerusalem artichoke inulin, chicory root inulin from Belgium, which is one of the leading suppliers when it comes to scientific research. And from your best people size premium. I say that. And then I also show some of the other ingredients of prebiotics that I had utilized such as green, organic green banana flour, which has a resistant starch in it, as well as a branded ingredient of his donload oligosaccharide, which was organic as well as Zotz XLS is what you’d see on a label. And what I was trying to show people was that per kilo, I’m using kilos, I apologize, I’m Australian. Like it was the chicory root in New Zealand on the Jerusalem on a track in one word, the cheapest ingredients. And it wasn’t that they were poor quality, but I was just trying to show people that there was $2.25 per kilo to the chicory root in Milan, it was $10 a kilo for the organic Jerusalem add a tricky one. And all I wanted to show was the comparative to the xylem, like a saccharide. That costed $39 a kilo, for the green banana flour, the pasta $25.50 a kilo. And so all these ingredients are what I had incorporated into the table into a product that I had called the daily uplifter. And a lot of times people would be asking, you know why the product costs of the way it costed. But it was actually a very expensive product to make. Whereas what I see people selling online is playing in your own powder. And they charge double what I was catching up with. And and as you all saw them in those videos, the new one was the cheapest ingredient in the product. So yes, you have to pay manufacturer to make the product. Yes, you have to pay for a small amount for packaging, and then this tiny bit of money that goes into freight. Obviously, if it’s online, if you are not chat, if you’re giving free shipping, then you have to incorporate a little bit of that, you know, to that as well to cover the shipping costs. And then as a business, you need some money to run a business. We’re not here to do it hope this session. What I’m getting at is that the discrepancy between all those costs involved. And then the final product costs that the consumer was receiving was so astronomically off that it just didn’t feel right for me to sit and watch people get taken advantage of knowing how much it costs to make. And knowing that these other prebiotics are actually I don’t want to say they’re better, but like you can get that there’s, there’s really strong science, and they’re definitely not worse. They’re like they’re equally beneficial on the importance of having diverse prebiotics to be diverse probiotics is at the end of the day, the most important thing, and so overloaded using all your money to buy one supplement that is one single source of a prebiotic, and just always having that again, you can’t afford to buy anything else. Well, you’re not buying the product that already has the blend incorporated for you is quite disheartening to me as someone who really wants people to reap all the benefits that they can from this nutrient and knowing that someone else is just in their back pocket collecting it all and trying to pretend that people and that they know what they’re talking about. So that was really the point of the videos. And yes, people can come see it over the prebiotic dietitian and saved it as a highlight at the top of top of my profile. But yeah, that was somewhat enlightening. It was
Dr. Heather Finley 13:49
super enlightening. Even for me. I feel like I know obviously a lot about prebiotics, but I don’t know a lot about the the processing and the like cost involved with that. And so super enlightening, because there is a big discrepancy on the market between products and even as a professional sometimes can be, like very confusing, like why is this product so much more expensive, and the reality is like, it doesn’t make it any better. It’s just a lot more expensive. Hey there, I know you are absolutely loving this episode. But I am so excited because my book The healthy happy gut cookbook is now available for pre order. This book is designed to help you identify the causes of your symptoms, give you really actionable steps to address them, and help you love food again and get back in the kitchen. So not only is it packed with tons of info, it’s also packed with over 50 delicious recipes that I’m so excited for you to try. When you preorder this book, you not only get the book on your doorstep on December 20 Just in time for Christmas, but you also get access to some bonus trainings and a live q&a call with me in December. So we will be releasing more info about that soon. But I would absolutely love it if you would preorder the book and share it with a friend who might need it as well. The link to preorder the book is in the show notes. And also on my website. Kind of going off of that a little bit you You briefly mentioned, the diversity being so important. So there’s two things that I want to talk about is when it comes to prebiotics is more better. And then you already talked on this, but just to go more in depth, like if more is better or more is not better. Why is diversity so important here? And like how much should we be thinking that we should be consuming of these prebiotics? Because a lot of people are saying more is better. But that might not be the case.
Kara Landau 15:50
Right? Yeah. So what what we find is that because dietary fiber hasn’t been set to have an upper limit across the globe, in terms of most government guidelines, really the goal is to get people to consume more fiber rich foods and vegetables or foods and beverages. So what we find is that then people who make products with isolated fibers trying to pull across that, that saying and that science, and therefore say so you should just eat more and more and more of my supplement or my product. And it’s just got one type of isolated fiber inside of it or one type of isolated, prebiotic, but in this case, it it typically is a fiber, it’s a soluble vegetable fiber. It’s a chicory root fiber, it’s partially hydrolyzed wide. So just as some examples, and what we know is that when you consume food, that it has intact fiber, so meaning you’re gonna get a blend of insoluble fiber soluble fiber, often some resistant starches, all the phytonutrients that come with that food, there might be some fats and proteins, some other carbohydrates, etc. Our body is going to respond very differently than if we over consume one type of isolated tap of a power of an isolated firebox. And what people do find is that digestive discomfort is often the first thing that people find right, they will end up with some more swelling and bloating, they either will be running to the bathroom, or they will end up being constipated, because it’s just it’s too much for that system. But beyond that, you can block nutrient absorption. If you have too much of a fiber, as you know, you’ve mentioned many other things that can go on more from a clinical setting that can be quite quite detrimental to someone’s health. And if you’ve got compounding factors have another issue going on auto immune issue can you know everything can exacerbate in the negative way. And so I think it’s really important that we don’t try to save just because there’s no upper limit to dietary fiber that was set as a guideline around food and beverage, that therefore that transcends into saying, therefore over consume one type of isolated fiber. And there’s there’s no upper limit. Most of the science has been often performed on lower doses. Because when it comes to these products, the the ingredients suppliers are typically the ones doing the research, and they want to in order to get I’m just talking from a business sense in order to get into more products and to grow there to grow the business and to make it easier for consumers to say yeah, I can incorporate that every single day, they’re going to look for what is the lowest dose that I can include. And so what we found is that the insulin for partially hydrolyzed guar gum, it’s typically around five grams a day, that means that prebiotic benefits are shown and that they’re tolerated. There is some studies that show that up at around 10 grams of these types of fibers are 11 grams, most people if you don’t have dysbiosis if you don’t have irritable bowel syndrome, you’re fine. But there aren’t studies performed on people consuming 50 grams or 80 grams or 100 grams a day which is often what we’re hearing online now people saying we had great having fiver and so this is a great way to do it and you know, put this into your smoothie or into your breakfast bowl or into pancakes or however people are going to use these powders or over consume the products that are made with them. The protein bars and the ice creams that are pumped with these ingredients
Kara Landau 19:29
and and it’s just not true you must have in your clinic people end up coming to you saying I don’t know why I’m so bloated that
Dr. Heather Finley 19:36
hates me that’s fiber hates me I am not trying a prebiotic and I’m like well we’re just gonna go really slow.
Kara Landau 19:44
And and like put it this way. I’m gonna like personally speaking I’m someone who has a very high fiber diet. I have some whole foods I have consumed many different products that consume you know, that contain these different isolated fibers as well. And even I, I’m human, you know, and someone who has a high fiber tolerance, I could even end up feeling very good, I will uncover I’m not pregnant, I will look pregnant at the end of the day, if I consume this, and I know that really the only way to to reduce that is to actually have a day following that does not consider these things. And to enter only eat veggies, you know, a salad made of real vegetables, if I find that the next day don’t have any more of these isolated ingredients. And really not the end result is don’t consume that much every day of which I adopt. So I think it’s just, it’s a really important message for people to understand, especially when like, there’s prebiotic sodas on the market, right. And a lot of them have up at eight or 10 grams of fiber, of which, when you look at the label, eat mostly is coming from inulin, which is a soluble fiber, they might have a blend in there, and like a blend is better than not having a blend. But I still know a lot of people that have come to me and said, You know, when they’ve had two cans, which can be 18 or 20 grams, yeah, fiber, that they just they end up locked up in pain look like they’re pregnant. This is for the men to you know, it’s just it’s very uncomfortable. And then they and then as you said, they want to avoid prebiotics. So they’re scared of this nutrient, when really, it’s about making sure that you have a mix. And so to the second part of your question, when I say a mix, it’s not just about having a mix of the types of soluble fibers, it’s about having a mix of resistant starches of insoluble fibers which are not the prebiotic, but they help move the soluble fibers through your system so that you don’t end up getting those negative digestive discomfort effects. So, you know, I really think that when we’re looking at it, we want diverse fibers, we want diverse prebiotics. And from that it will feed we have so many different gut bacteria that are already naturally in us, let alone needing to take a probiotic supplement to prop up one isolated strain, unless that’s been proven to help you with, you know, clinical validity of a particular issue that you’re having. And in that case, it can be very beneficial. We already are born with so many different gut bacteria, and they’re just dying away, because we’re not consuming the nutrients that they need, which is what we’re talking about today. And if we could just eat diverse fibers and diverse prebiotics, our body would naturally calibrate itself. And you might need to work with a practitioner to remove any you know, any negative fungi or parasites or bacteria that’s gone in to recalibrate if something has gone. Not in the calibration that’s supposed to be for you personally. But as a whole, our bodies are pretty smart. Again, when we feed them these I often saw prebiotics as a preventative measure, feed your gut so that your body can look after itself, you will feel the benefits. And I’ll say instantaneously, but like pretty quickly, like give it give it a week or two for your you know, for your digestive system to settle. That you will you truly will feel the benefits and the anti inflammatory benefits that prebiotics have, which is something that I mean for over a decade I’ve been preaching this and I’m so happy to see the science continue to build is that the anti inflammatory benefits of having good gut health as you know, it doesn’t matter if if it’s to do with diabetes, or heart disease, or any any sort of disease state, or what I’m most passionate around around mental health, when we know that inflammation to the brain is linked to anxiety and depression. And if we can, like nourish our gut ultimately support our mood and, you know, just be our best selves, like how much better does life become? It’s I just think it’s a really exciting area. And I just want people to understand how good they can feel. But just with the right information.
Dr. Heather Finley 24:19
Yeah, totally. And I think this is why we get along so well is because in a world where Digestive Health has kind of become like what you can’t do like you can’t eat this like super long list of foods and you know, like all these elimination diets like our perspective is so much different like actually digestive health is about abundance, it’s about what you should be including and what you can be including and the diversity and the abundance and like even just the like talking about that. Like there’s such a different mindset behind it. If you automatically are thinking like, fiber hates me, I can’t eat these foods or this is the long list of things that my body doesn’t like, versus my gut is smart, and my body is smart. And my bacteria in my gut are smart, and they need a diversity of foods. It’s so much more hopeful.
Kara Landau 25:15
Yeah, I completely agree. And I feel I mean, I think a lot of practitioners like in, I would say, in our generation have really created a movement here, right around trying to make people feel like food is a safe thing you don’t need it’s not about dieting all the time. It’s not about restriction. It’s not about less. And it’s about how can we incorporate all these beautiful, delicious foods into our eating patterns, I won’t say into our diet into our eating patterns. So it’s just part of our lifestyle, so that we can live our best lives have the most energy not being inhibited by having a sore stomach or feeling like this, you know, thinking about food. I know, when I was a kid, and you know, in my parents generation, those often, it was really around. It’s around aesthetics, right? It’s consumers. And that’s a whole nother conversation. But your body will ultimately like, if there’s an aesthetic book you’re wanting, this will help you get there without you even having to think about it. Because your body will your your metabolism will be working well, your inflammatory pathways will be down, it’s all going to support every part. And yet, just by not thinking about that, and not always in the back of your thing, oh, my gosh, I shouldn’t make that I can’t make that, that. That stress, that actually negatively impacts your gut health anyway. So you’re exacerbating a problem, our gut and our brain talk to each other. And when we’re stressed, it makes our gut health worse. And when we’re calm, it actually improves our gut health. Just like in the opposite direction. Like I said, if you look at your gut health, you reduce inflammation, and therefore you look after your mental health. Like, that’s just incredible. Well, we’re sort of two systems working together into one beautiful thing that is apps. And so, you know, I just think that we really do need to continue to, you know, people like you and myself and people that are listening to the advocates for helping continue that momentum of what can we eat? What can we incorporate? If something didn’t sit right with me? Is there something else I can have instead that I really enjoy? That my body will respond well to? And, as you say, abundance? Yeah,
Dr. Heather Finley 27:35
totally. So I know, I know, the question that a lot of people are now thinking is, okay, well, which prebiotic supplements should I take? Or do I even need to take one if I’m eating an abundance of foods? You know, which 1am I going to tolerate better? And if I don’t tolerate them, like some of the FOSS, gos czas? Like if I’ve tried those before, and you know, had all of these symptoms, like where do I start? Or do I even need to? So let’s give some people some starting places and some recommendations there.
Kara Landau 28:13
Sure. So I would actually, what I would say is that just I’ll start with where you where you went with all the oligosaccharides with the FOSS, gos. So czas dissolved with disaccharide is actually typically very well tolerated, funnily enough, and you only need most of the science shows that you need about one gram a day to have a prebiotic with photogenic effects, so causing that short chain production. So there’s not very much one gram one gram and it’s hardly anything. That’s exactly what I’m saying. So, whereas and to be fair, like Foss and bas are also very new need a very small amount to have a benefit. So and gossip as well, I guess it’s more if you’re, they are starting to make vegan sources of gossip, but most of the gossip in the market is going to be from dairy originally. So anyone that’s vegan that gets that won’t work, but I would I would be saying that if you are particularly sensitive to the oligosaccharides one try to go for something like I just said there which is a very low dose prebiotic as the beginning. But if not, the suggestion, I would always say is to go towards the resistant starches, which are typically more well tolerated and sort of smoother on stomach. Those are inside things like resistant potato starch. So you can take literally cook and then call your potato and then and you will develop a resistant starch as we’ve discussed before and you can even repeat it after that and still reap the benefits. However, you can get resistant potato starch as a plain supplement, and three and a half grams a day is the is the law dosage to get a significant benefit to your gut health you can have, there are benefits of higher doses as well. But the difference between the benefit is not so significant that I would be saying, therefore try to work out a way to get 20 grams of resistant potato starch into your diet every day, that might be a little bit hard. So I would say Yeah, three and a half grams with resistant potato starch, green banana flour that is slightly a less dense source of resistant starch, then the resistant potato starch. But trying to get a if you can work that into a scene, I would say put it into a smoothie. If it’s a little bit of powder, if you don’t get too much of the grittiness flavor, you could sprinkle it over your oats as an example, you could is to make them into sort of bliss balls, energy balls. So that’s another way that you can operate it but basically have raw is what I’m recommending here. And then yet, you can have through whole foods you can cook in there called pasta, rice, all those grains, you will develop a more resistant starch, it is significantly less dense source. So you know what, when you get you in a whole bowl of pasta or something, if you’re not plus a customer, not the right example, but something like that, you will end up getting two three grams of resistant starch, whereas Western through a whole bowl, whereas here we’re saying in a supplement, you’re gonna get the three grams, just through three grams of that resistant potato starch. So just so you understand why sometimes we do say, if you’re not eating already, a lot of these resistant starch rich foods, it’s not something that’s naturally in your diet, and you’re going to find it very hard to incorporate just every day, it’s something that you and your family would usually be eating just because of I don’t know cultural differences of what you used to eat, or whatever the case is, that’s where incorporating a supplement could be beneficial. I also would say that, you know, a lot of people think that just because they eat a lot of vegetables, that therefore they’re getting all the prebiotics they need and like don’t get me wrong, that is definitely like pretty much the best way to do this. However, if you’re eating tomato, lettuce, carrot, I’m talking things that are not dense sources of prebiotics, you’ll be getting a lot of dietary fiber and getting benefits that come from insoluble and soluble fibers there. But the density of the prebiotic content is not very high. And so I would say that if you are open to incorporating a functional food or a supplement as well, that that will be beneficial to you. But I’m certainly not here to preach or push anything. So those would be some ideas. And then there’s like we mentioned this poly phenolic prebiotics. So interestingly, kiwi fruit powder, which is dehydrated and extracted from kiwi fruits, has prebiotic benefits is also you. I don’t know if you’ve discussed it on another podcast that it’s shown that when you have I know Zespri kiwifruit did some studies and showed that we have two kiwi fruit today it can help with with downward movements and making softer stalls. So for people that want the digestive health benefits, that’s also another benefit to consuming something like that. So yeah, it’s, it’s always expanding the science and the information. But at the end of the day, I think that mixing it up, not just not just buying, you know, the one partially hydrolyzed guar gum supplement. And because that especially like I’ve seen a lot, that be pushed a lot, both through clinicians, because that’s what they’ve been educated in or through brands or products. And, you know, when you have one prebiotic, you’re going to be feeding just a few select strains of probiotics, but like we just discussed, we’ve got so we’ve got so many different products that need to be fed and we don’t want, you know, just those few strains to go up and up and up and everything else to die. We want to make sure that we’re feeding full of them so that we can tolerate more foods, the stronger out that the more you’re going to be able to tolerate a larger variety of foods in the diet.
Dr. Heather Finley 34:22
What I always say I’m like your your gut bugs are picky eaters. So like, give them they each want different foods. So you need to have diversity. And like you said, your gut bacteria actually will help you digest these foods. So the more diverse they are, the better your digestion is going to be. So it’s a win win. And just slowly getting to the point where you’re incorporating some of these things is going to help you to be able to tolerate it versus well I just don’t tolerate it. So I’m going to avoid it like the plague and never eat it again, which is typically the reaction that most people have,
Kara Landau 34:58
ya know, and I understand that I mean, if you have more
Kara Landau 35:02
food or a supplement you, you would be, you’d have an aversion to it. That’s very natural. But what I think you and I are really trying to express here is that get through that fear, like, let’s get to the other side, because what’s on the other side is just so worth it, and will open up so much enjoyment to your life. Imagine all these days that you thought you could need and you’ve got, I don’t know how old people are, you’ve got another 5070 years ahead of you. But you could, you could then be enjoying them again. And all the social engagements that come with that and everything. So I think that’s what we keep trying to tell people.
Dr. Heather Finley 35:42
Yeah. And like that’s, I mean, I would think most people’s goal is to be able to love food again, like and not be scared of food. There’s like you said, stress affects everything. And when you’re scared of food that’s going to be negatively impacting your whole system, and especially your gut health. So we definitely don’t want to be scared every time that we eat. Well, we’ve talked about a lot today, is there any other hot prebiotic topic that we missed? Or that we want to mention, before we close out?
Kara Landau 36:14
Oh, oh, no, I think we’ve I think we’ve
Dr. Heather Finley 36:21
everyone’s mind is now exploding. Yeah. Yeah, well, Kara, this was amazing. And I think so beneficial. So to close the episode, what I love to hear from you what I always ask a anyone that I have on the podcast is, what’s your favorite way to love your gut? Which I probably know the answer, but maybe they’ll surprise us. And then also tell people where they can find you.
Kara Landau 36:45
Oh, my favorite way to love my gut is is to really live in alignment is to get my mental health in place, because it actually I feel it in my gut. And it as we say, it’s that bi directional response. So what does that mean? It means making sure that I do yoga, which we know and exercises that can be beneficial for your gut health, it means eating a variety of colors of, you know, fresh fruits and vegetables every day and food that I love, so that I’m nourishing myself putting myself in environments that I find calming going out in nature, because all of that has been proven to both affect your mental health and to affect your gut health. So that is how I love my gut. And the last question was, where can people find me, I think I’m over at the prebiotic dietician on Instagram. So come join me on my journey. I’m down in Mexico these days, so and also share some of these other lifestyle elements as well as the stripe prebiotic science that we’re talking about today.
Dr. Heather Finley 37:55
I love it. This was such a good episode. And thanks so much for for joining me today.
Kara Landau 38:00
Thanks for having me.
Please note that this episode is not a substitute for medical advice. And you should always consult your healthcare provider prior to making any changes.
I’m giving your gut a thumbs up because you just finished another episode of the love your gut podcast. Thanks so much for listening in to this episode. I hope it was helpful.
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