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How Your Gut Health Impacts Your Sex Life (including Your Cravings)!

have you ever wondered why We crave What We crave well today I have got a special treat for you I'm here with Dr Amy Shaw who is a nutritionist and double board certified physician who recently wrote a book that's out for pre-order right now it's called I'm so effing hungry Why We crave What We crave and what we can do about it thanks so much for coming on Dr Shah this is so great for so much this is going to be a real treat and you know I asked you guys in our community what you wanted to learn about so we took these questions from what you guys wanted to know so please make sure that if something wasn't answered or you want a part two make sure you comment down below and let us know so let's get into it so let's start off what exactly is gut health and how can it improve our sex life meaning our hormones our testosterone and other things that help optimize our overall health and our sex life testosterone and gut health are so intimately entwined so that they've seen studies where the testosterone level actually correlates with the quality of your gut health in a recent study they found that there are certain bacteria like pharmaceutis that are elevated in people who have higher levels of testosterone this was done in older men and they found that it really correlated with the quality of testosterone because the gut bacteria actually metabolize and recirculate testosterone into the system and so we can improve our testosterone levels by actually improving gut health so some of the reason that you get a boost in your mood and your energy levels with improved gut health is because the Improvement of your hormones so how can we improve our gut health and I know you have like a whole five-step system in your book but tell us a little bit about how we can improve our gut health so we can get those benefits I was so shocked Arena when I wrote I'm so effing hungry I was so shocked that how we feel on a daily basis What We crave our energy levels is coming from our gut there's this gut brain connection that's making us happy crave satisfied coming from this internal environment that's in our colon mostly lower colon and there are ways that we can actually improve it so we know now that if you transplant the gut bacteria from one person to another you can completely change their mood they can go from depressed to not depressed they can go from anxious to not anxious they can even go from non-schizophrenic to schizophrenic I mean it's insane that there's no change in the brain chemistry but just by transferring the gut bacteria you can change that much of your brain state so one of the craziest things we learned is that it only takes three days of a change diet a radically different diet to actually change the gut microbiome so in a 2 2014 Landmark study they actually looked at people and they said okay let's just rapidly change their diet into a very very healthy diet and see how long it takes for us to see a difference in the gut microbiome and diversity and levels of good gut bacteria they were expecting about two to three weeks but within three days they could see a market change and that improved over the next two weeks and it was a crossover trial so then they switched them back to an ultra process unhealthy diet and they saw it reverted back so it's really easy for us I feel like it's something that we should all be talking about more to in improve our gut microbiome so we can have better testosterone levels better hormone levels in general better mood more control of our Cravings higher levels of dopamine and serotonin which are our happiness hormones that is so fascinating so just three days that's that's amazing and you know you touched on this a little bit but you know how it can affect our mood but also I I understand I saw actually one of your Instagram posts about how the gut bacteria of your father or your parent can affect your child so can you go a little bit into detail about that because we have a lot of you know parents who watch this particularly male parents and I think they'd love to hear that it's so fascinating transgenerational epigenetics where you're passing down Gene changes from parent to child you also have microbiome that you pass down from parent to child and what we found out is that if you're someone who took a lot of antibiotics didn't eat a healthy diet you you've really used a lot of and we'll talk about you know some of the negative things we do to the microbiome but a poor diet is number one you know not getting enough sleep eating having a lot of antibiotics in your life whatever it is you remove a lot of species of bacteria from your gut and when you do that you also remove the species from the Next Generation and so what we found is is that we actually have 40 percent less diversity of our gut microbes than our ancestors and we think it's because as you know we've gotten cleaner you know this whole hygiene hypothesis as we've gotten more modern richer we've started to remove the gut bacteria in the amount of gut bacteria and also in the different space species wow so but that passes down from father to child so like the in the sperm essentially is that what the thought is exactly through the sperm and also because the p the people that you spend the most time with in your home your children your spouse their gut microbiome is most closely matching you so for example if you took two identical twins and you separate them their gut microbiome will look closer to the people they're spending time with to the people they're living with and that their parents that they're around than each other even though genetically they're identical I mean that is just so fascinating so let's get into a little bit about what is a gut healthy or a very good gut healthy diet and you know there's this is kind of a very big buzzword right now but there's science behind this so can you share a little bit about that I know we hear in the media oh plant-based or paleo or keto or what I think we're missing the big picture on is that we're not talking enough about what is good for the gut microbes the gut microbes they have preferences they're hungry they're literally starving to death and so we should become concentrating on feeding those microbes if we care about our Hormone Health our mood our Cravings our long-term inflammation then we should be feeding those gut bacteria the things that it wants not necessarily what's trending on in media today so what I did is I took the six essential foods that the researchers found that gut bacteria prefer so the good gut bacteria prefer certain foods and the bad bacteria what we consider inflammatory bacteria they tend to love sugar and other processed fats and things like that so we really want to be growing The Beneficial good gut bacteria that can help us lower our inflammation levels boost our dopamine levels our serotonin levels our hormone levels and therefore there's six foods that you should be including in your diet every single day I go through all six of those categories so because I know that not everybody is going to want to eat kale for example so the category that um cosinolates which includes Caleb also includes brussels sprouts and bok choy all of these other things that contain glucosinolates like cabbage and cauliflower so that if you didn't like one of those foods you can pick another one you just want to get each of those six categories in that's that's awesome and then I know that you know a lot of people ask about probiotics and prebiotics and what are those and do we need them and are they in that role that group of six probiotics and prebiotics are in one of the categories called the fiber category so fiber is a group of things so it could be Prebiotic fiber which is most contained in garlic leeks rawish bananas there's certain things that have a lot of Prebiotic fiber but in general foods that are fiberful are high in prebiotics probiotic is foods that actually have bacteria in it this is like your Greek yogurt this is probiotic cottage cheese Your Kimchi your sauerkraut kombucha these foods are essential in our diet to improve our gut health now the problem is is that most people are getting zero zero prebiotics and zero probiotics and so I kind of put them in one category because I thought that it would be easier for people to concentrate on getting one of each of the foods in each category so that it's not overwhelming because it's hard to go from zero fiber which you know we eat less than 20 grams of fiber on average 97 of Americans eat you know less than 20 grams of fiber to go to a gut healthy 40 grams and above is a big step and so what you want to do is start incorporating one food from each of the food groups that we talk about and eventually that will end up making you reach that 25 to 40 gram goal every day and so I think people really want to know is how do you transition this healthy gut diet so say you make all the small changes that eventually lead to a change in your in your diet how does that ultimately lead to weight loss and reduction in Cravings it's crazy Rena I didn't learn this I don't know if you learned this in medical that there were appetites suppressing hormones craving suppressing hormones that actually get created by gut bacteria um so they are peptides they look like our own hunger hormones and satiation hormones and they go to the brain and they modulate our hunger appetite and satiation that is just insane say that again because I think that's so powerful I want to make sure if anyone missed it they they can really take that home with them because that is just that's the key that's awesome yeah the gut bacteria itself make our hunger hormones are satiation hormones and our appetite centers so they are sending signals to the brain that overtake our own brain signals and they are telling you that you're full or that that you're still hungry and that's why improving your gut health and really boosting up that good gut bacteria can help you control your negative cravings and improve the cravings for fiberful foods for Probiotic foods for polyphenol Foods because they're going to ask for what they want and that's going to override what you want and it's crazy to think that there are organisms inside of us that are actually like modulating our hormones and our thoughts and our mood but literally the dopamine that bacteria make is 10 to 100 times stronger than our endogenous dopamine so they are literally in charge so if you're like struggling with you know food addiction porn addiction any sort of addiction doing this could actually help raise your dopamine internally so you don't have to seek it out elsewhere so I'll tell you renal one of the biggest things that people don't realize is that with porn with gambling with gaming Instagram food it's similar it's all using the dopamine craving pathway and how that works is that when we see porn when we play that game when we win that pot we get a big burst like an explosion of dopamine in our brain but the way dopamine works it's really crazy it gives us a big burst of good feelings and excitement but then it quickly dissipates into discomfort so if you've ever played a game or if you've ever you know known people who really are addicted to gaming porn you know all this it's like it makes you want it even more it makes you want to go back and do it even more so it's our body's way of keeping us motivated so say you find a big tree full of food it wants you to be excited about it but then it wants you to go back and search for that again maybe get even more for your family and friends it wants you to keep building it wants you to keep searching it wants to keep mating you know it's our dopamine system it's created to keep us motivated on the tasks that you know help us be better humans so basically having more dopamine in your own body is going to help reduce that craving essentially for those other things so important gaming with positive dopamine explosions so what I mean is there are things like eating dark chocolate there you know going for a sunny walk exercising they give you dopamine bursts it's not going to be a machine gun like burst that they are able to engineer with gaming and porn it's going to be a water gun spray of dopamine explosion right so you have to remember that you're going to have to stack some of those natural dopamine releases and increase your endogenous dopamine by your diet so that you can start to replace your cravings for positive ones so that you know once you start to realize wow okay that porn it gave me that huge dopamine rush but it just kept me wanting more like the next time so maybe I change my diet increase my dopamine levels I start doing things that are going to give me dopamine bursts in smaller ways but I'll stack them up so that I can start to wean myself off of this negative addiction if that that's what it is all right so I want to ask another thing that's kind of related but you know people talk about intermittent fasting how does that relate to our gut health okay so our gut bacteria they need rest and sleep just like we do we have circadian rhythms and we'd need time Darkness to repair our renew and sleep right they also have circadian rhythms in fact every living thing on this planet has a circadian rhythm plants animals bacteria all of it so they need some time to also rest they can't be doing their job all the time and so what we like just how we feel when we're sleep deprived is how they feel if you're eating late Into the Night and then you're eating first thing in the morning you're really not giving them enough rest enough time to do the other jobs that they have so for example the gut bacteria use food and light from light signals from your your body to know when it's day and when it's night daytime they help metabolize you know with your hormones food send signals to the brain and then nighttime they also need to rest and repair so that's why it's so important for us to give them gut rest like just you know 70 years ago we didn't have the option to eat huge meals at midnight you know mostly people ate their last large meal at sundown and then maybe had some small snacks but really weren't eating much before bed and then you know in the morning you weren't rolling out of bed with like a granola bar and orange juice in your hand you're mostly you know getting through the morning maybe an hour before you had your first meal and so what I promote for most of the population is to start with something like that is really to a circadian style fast so intermittent fasting has so many different meanings but most people could probably do a fast that starts two to three hours before bed and then ends an hour or so after they wake up and that will give you a good you know depending on the timing between 12 and 15 hours of fasting and that's really really beneficial for your gut bacteria for your brain for your digestion all of it that's awesome well thank you so much Dr Shaw this has been amazing tell everybody where they can get your book when it's coming out where they can pre-order it because I'm sure everyone here wants to know how what are those six food groups and what do they need to do to improve their gut health because I know I already pre-ordered it I can't wait for it to come in the mail and read it I'm really excited acting hungry it is available on February 28th everywhere books are sold get it from your local bookstore if you can just to support those guys like you know back in the day me and Dr Malik used to go to bookstores all the time now it's hard to even find one thanks so much and I'll put a link in the description so make sure you check out her book learn so much more and again if you have more questions and want a part two comment below let me know we love spending time together so this is just an excuse for us to hang out all right thanks so much as always remember to take care of yourself because you are worth it [Music] thank you foreign [Music]

Dr.

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