Gut Check

I have written a lot over the years about my daily smoothie routine, which I have been consistently making for the past 20 years or so. I would like to think that I have been better off for having done this consistently for so long but I’m not willing to do a controlled experiment which would require me to stop drinking my smoothie to truly make a comparison in terms of how I feel and if there’s any meaningful change in my blood work. Said differently, if I have felt well and my blood work has been good then why rock the boat?

Gut health is an area of medical research that has grown in terms of the number of studies and public dissemination of information. From what I have read it appears to be a very important contributor to our health and well being as the gut biome can affect every organ of the body as well as impacting our immune system. This is what one article had to say about the importance of a healthy gut:

The gastrointestinal system is the main “portal” for taking in and processing nutrients, but it also serves a communication center and disease fighter. From your nervous and immune systems to your mental health and digestive function, a healthy gut plays a pivotal role in your overall well-being.

During one of my workout sessions my trainer was mentioning that his wife and a couple of his clients had their gut health analyzed by a company called Viome and found the results interesting. I was intrigued because I was curious to learn if the ingredients in my smoothie were helpful to me or suboptimal, along with other foods that I consume somewhat regularly.

Gut Health

I ordered kits for Heather and I because I also wanted to know how much overlap there was between us regarding optimal and suboptimal foods and what our current baselines were for our overall gut health. I won’t go into her results but I will do so for mine because I was very pleased by the results and found the recommendations to be interesting. Of course I’m going on faith that they have enough data, talented scientists, and sophisticated equipment to be able to generate accurate recommendations. And while they clearly earn revenue from selling the test kits, the recurring revenue from Viome’s business model is centered around selling customers supplements catered to optimizing their gut health based on their results.

There are 22 overall categories that are analyzed for which one can get three outcomes: Good, Average, and Not Optimal. My overall gut health was a 58 which is classified as good and “conveys that the activities within the gut microbiome are overall supportive of a healthy gut environment.” Wooho, I have created a healthy gut environment. I’m sure glad it doesn’t look like my office sometimes.

According to Viome, 23% of its population is Not Optimal, 54% is Average, and 23% is Good, so I’m pleased about where I landed. Given my overall score my initial thought was that I was probably on the right track with my smoothie.

Of the 22 sub-categories, 16 of mine were Good, 5 Average, and 1 Not Optimal. The one category that was Not Optimal was Sulfide Gas Production Pathways. According to the explanation on the app a high degree of activity in this area “contributes to pro-inflammatory patterns potentially harmful to the gut lining, as well as slowing of your motility (moving the food down your digestive tract). My Not Optimal score represents 25% of the Viome population. If that’s my only Not Optimal score I felt like I was very much on the right track (gastrointestinally speaking).

I’m not sure how to improve that score but I have to assume indirectly it can be influenced by what I found to be the most valuable recommendations made by Viome. These relate to classifying a tremendous number of food items into Superfoods, Enjoy, Minimize, and Avoid. Rather than identifying all of the foods that showed up in each category I thought I would show what foods comprised my Superfoods and which ones to avoid. I will also point out some takeaways.

Green are the ones in my smoothie ? Blue are ones that I either eat somewhat regularly

The first takeaway is that there are far more items in the Superfoods column than Avoid which is obviously a good thing. The foods in green are ones that I have been putting in my smoothie for many years so that too is satisfying in that I have been consuming healthy foods daily and has presumably contributed to my overall gut health. This is further corroboration that I don’t need to do a rigorous study by stopping my smoothie consumption to compare how I feel and analyzing if the results from my blood work differ. The fact that four of my smoothie ingredients are personal Superfoods is enough for me.

The items in blue are ones that I either eat somewhat regularly, I like a lot, or occasionally consume. I was surprised that so many vegetables showed up in the Avoid category. Fortunately, although I do eat the ones in blue from time to time, I don’t like them enough to miss them and there are plenty of other ones I can eat that will be better for my gut health.?

The only food that is a bit of a bummer that’s on the Avoid list is eggs (and egg whites). And while I don’t consume a lot of eggs, I do enjoy breakfast for dinner sometimes and of course a lot of foods have eggs in them. On the other hand, it would seem that if I keep staying the course and put more of an emphasis on my Superfoods and be cognizant of those foods on my Avoid list then I should continue to have good outcomes, even if I have eggs from time to time. In addition, there are plenty of foods on the Enjoy list so I should have no problem eating in a gut health optimizing way while still finding what I’m eating enjoyable and tasty.

As is often said, information is power and what gets measured gets managed. I am very pleased that I have further corroboration that continuing with my daily smoothie should be beneficial for me and that I now have even better information in terms of choosing what foods to emphasize and which ones to avoid. An example of this occurred last week when I was having Kodiak pancakes (a protein-rich pancake). Normally I would put maple syrup on them but it turns out that maple syrup is on my Avoid list so Heather suggested putting heated up natural honey on them instead as honey is on my Enjoy list. So this is what I did and they still tasted great. I don’t think I would have even contemplated making this change had I not had the results of my biome analysis.

Every so often it’s good to do a gut check in many areas of my life. I’m particularly glad I did one for my gut itself.