 Do this every day to lower stress So when you think of stress reduction, you probably picture practices such as meditation yoga, running, walking outdoors, and green bathing. And while all that is good, that's not what we're going to talk about today. See, the vast majority of our stress inducers actually come from our gut microbiome, which means taking care of your gut is actually one of the best things you can do to keep stress and anxiety and depression at bay. So let's talk about the gut-brain connection and we should expand on that to the microbiome gut-brain connection. First of all, we're now understanding that feel-good hormones like serotonin and the brain-calming hormone GABA are actually coming and produced by a healthy gut microbiome. For years, we used to think that these hormones were manufactured in the brain. A few years ago we realized that in fact they were arriving at the brain from distant sites, and so we thought that they were produced by the neurons in our gut. And there's plenty of neurons down there. But surprise, surprise, we're wrong about that as well. And we now realize it's the gut microbiome themselves that take the precursors for serotonin and GABA and manufacture them. And they are then put into our bloodstream and our lymph and even travel up the vagus nerve to calm our brain and make our brain feel better. Now, anxiety and depression is quite complicated, but messaging from the gut is now getting front and center attention. So if your gut is out of whack, you could absolutely have increased anxiety and depression. Let me give you an example. Recent studies have taken rats, normal rats, and feed them gut contents from depressed individuals. And these rats eating the gut contents of depressed individuals will become anxious and depressed. And you can actually measure this quite easily. So you can make a rat depressed by giving them depressed individuals gut microbiome. Many, many, many years ago there was an experiment done in the 1920s where they took institutionalized depressed individuals, gave them colonics, enemas, to clean out their gut microbiome, and then gave them fecal enemas from happy people. And believe it or not, these individuals got happy. How in the world does that happen? Well, there's multiple mechanisms, but one of the most important ones is that these neurotransmitters are actually absent in people with dysbiotic bacteria. And you actually have gang members taking over a very peaceful community and that anxiety is actually transmitted to your brain. Now another problem for most of us is that glyphosate, which is the main ingredient in Roundup, is now present in almost everything we eat, almost all of our wines, almost all of our foods, all of our oats, all of our energy bars, our granolas, our cereals, are loaded with glyphosate. And glyphosate, sadly, kills healthy gut bacteria. So that you could eat, for instance, serotonin-producing foods, everybody knows that tryptophan is loaded in turkey and that tryptophan has calming effects on the brain. But the problem is if you don't have the gut bacteria that can take tryptophan and turn it into serotonin, then you could eat turkey every day and you'd feel no effect. And what we're learning is that glyphosate, in particular, kills off the bacteria that manufacture these feel-good hormones. So you're screwed? Well, not necessarily. For starters, you really should limit the amount of glyphosate in your diet by buying organic foods and buying either organic or biodynamic wines. We're beginning to see them more and more produced here in the United States, the wines, but there are a lot of them in France and Italy and Portugal and they're becoming readily available. So do yourself a favor and do your gut microbiome a favor and buy organic and buy biodynamic. Now, if you don't already, start drinking coffee or green tea every single day. It's loaded with polyphenols, which feed friendly gut bacteria. And the more we're learning about polyphenols, the more we realize that they are an essential food for gut bacteria. So, like I said in the last book, when I tell you to eat the rainbow, what you're actually doing is eating polyphenol-rich foods. Now, on top of that, as I mentioned in previous podcasts, the good news, those of you who are afraid of the caffeine effects of coffee or tea, decaffeinated coffee, decaffeinated tea, still has the same benefits. In fact, coffee is so good for you in terms of depression and anxiety that drinking two cups of coffee per day has amazing effects. Of almost 10,000 adults in the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, those who drank at least two cups of coffee per day experienced a 32% lower prevalence of self-reported depression than people who did not drink coffee. 32%, pretty nice. In a study of 14,000 university students in Spain who continued to be followed right now, those who drank at least four cups of coffee per day were more than 20% less likely to be diagnosed with clinically significant depression. Okay, but what about all those coffee drinkers who seem tired, wired, and overcaffeinated? Well, for a lot of these people, they're not drinking coffee the way they should be. You shouldn't be putting sugar in it. You shouldn't have Fufu drinks. You shouldn't have dairy in it. And quite frankly, you really should stop drinking coffee after about four o'clock in the afternoon. And please, please, please don't have a coffee as an after-dinner treat. And if you're going to do that, please have decaffeinated coffee. Among other things, coffee can actually dilate your lower esophageal sphincter, which prevents reflux. And if you have a big meal and wash it down with a cup of caffeinated coffee, you may actually experience gherd from that cup of coffee. So just be careful with it. The third thing you should do every day is get enough postbiotic foods. What the heck are those? I've talked about it over and over again, but it bears repeating. Vinegars, fermented foods, raw sheep, goat and cow's milk products, goat and sheep yogurt, kefiers that are not flavored, goat and sheep yogurts that are not flavored with sugar or fruit. These all are great fermented foods. And we're now beginning to realize that a lot of our good gut bacteria have to be stimulated to eat the prebiotic fiber that helps make these important antidepressant compounds, but they need a jump start. And this is research that's ongoing at Stanford. It's research that's been done around the world now. Getting fermented foods, even as simple as vinegars into your diet, even as simple as getting yogurts into your diet, this will really start improving your anxiety and your depression. Now, with what I said, I do want to mention that occasional stress is perfectly normal. But if your stress levels seem to be taking a toll on your day to day life, I really strongly encourage you to consult a mental health professional. There's absolutely no shame in getting help and ask for it. It's out there, but you got to ask first, nobody's going to come knocking on your door. This next one is sure to surprise you. In general, the value of the egg is in the yolk. That's where all the nutrients, all the vitamins are. The protein is mostly in the whites.