We know that microbes produce a lot of the brain chemicals that can make you stressed or relaxed.

Serotonin is one that is a key component in most antidepressant drugs like Prozac.

And the other is GABA, which is a key chemical used in drugs like Valium.

By altering those two products which are made by your gut microbes,

you can increase or decrease mood and anxiety.

I got in touch with you in about, I think, 2017, 2018, because I wanted to do a story around

the gut microbiome and fermenting in particular and the impact, for example, on anxiety.

Having had an experience myself, I'd been diagnosed with that catch-all phrase of IBS through

bloating and brain fog and various things.

And one nutritionist fortunately suggested I try kefir. So I got into making homemade

kefir and then from that kombucha increased my fibre. And the difference it made both in terms

of my gut, but also my mental health

with anxiety was huge. So there's clearly a massive impact on terms of mental health. But what

you're saying as well, pretty much, well, heart health, chronic health, all of this is hugely

impacted by what's going on in your gut. So really, there's not many things that

you can do to move the dial more than get your gut in order. I think that's right. As an

individual, that's correct. You know, the food choices we make every day are probably the most

important choices we make for our are probably the most important choices we

make for our health.

And so we haven't, and that message hasn't really got out to us.

We've been told that one size fits all and that you follow general, you know, five a day

government advice and you'll be fine and, you know, you've seen that that's

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