Gut microbiome testing: What can it reveal about your health?

Your gut microbiome, a bustling community of microorganisms, is a vital player in your overall health. It doesn’t just impact your digestive system — it has a profound influence on your brain health and well-being. However, the gut microbiome is a complex, long misunderstood realm, and figuring out how it affects daily life can leave even the most dedicated health enthusiasts scratching their heads. Here at ZOE, we’ve transformed our understanding of this bustling microbial world, where both “good” and “bad” gut bacteria reside. In today’s episode, Jonathan speaks with Prof. Nicola Segata and Prof. Tim Spector to explore how ZOE's microbiome testing and unique microbiome health scores provide personalized insights into your gut health. Download our FREE guide — Top 10 Tips to Live Healthier: https://zoe.com/freeguide If you want to uncover the right foods for your body, head to joinzoe.com/podcast and get 10% off your personalized nutrition program. Nicola Segata is a professor and principal investigator at the Laboratory of Computational Metagenomics, at the CIBIO department of the University of Trento. His background is in metagenomics, machine learning, microbiome research, and microbial genomics. Tim Spector is ZOE's scientific co-founder and one of the world's top 100 most cited scientists. Timecodes: 00:00 Introduction 01:41 Quick fire questions 03:38 Why should we care about gut microbes? 07:00 How many different microbes do we have in our gut? 11:37 Why would we want to measure our microbiome? 13:15 Can we change our microbiome? 18:00 Is it possible to make a dramatic change in your microbiome over time? 20:21 What does the latest data tell us about improving our diet? 23:24 How does the ZOE micobiome gut test work? 27:07 What goes on in the lab to get these results? 30:54 Is there enough information in the gut microbiome to make a full health assessment? 34:20 What can our microbes tell us about diseases? 35:55 What useful information does the microbiome test show us? 36:51 Are we still making new discoveries in the microbiome? 41:03 Do different microbes prefer specific foods? 43:14 How do different lifestyles around the world change your microbiome? 47:44 5 simple tips to improve gut health 50:45 How rapidly can you damage your microbiome? 53:58 Can taking painkillers regularly negatively impact the microbiome? 56:10 Summary 60:03 Goodbyes/Outro Mentioned in today’s episode: The person-to-person transmission landscape of the gut and oral microbiomes from Nature Sharing of gut microbial strains between selected individual sets of twins cohabitating for decades from PLoS One A genetic gift for sushi eaters from Nature Find Nicola on ResearchGate and X. Episode transcripts are available here. Is there a nutrition topic you’d like us to explore? Email us at podcast@joinzoe.com, and we’ll do our best to cover it.