š± Welcome to Gutuary š¦
Iām ushering in 2023 with a āchallengeā Iāve dubbed Gutuary, a.k.a. Microbiome Month.
What is Gutuary?
Gutuary is like Dry January, but with even more stuff piled on. Because who doesnāt like more constraints?
The goal is to run a one month boot camp designed to turbocharge the microbiome.
Why worry about my microbiome?
I'm planning a deeper dive on the importance of the microbiome later in the month, but here are some quick hits that should seal the deal for you now.
There's far more cells in our microbiome than in our body. We're more bacteria than eukaryote.
Plus...
99.5% of our genetic code is not human. It comes from these microbes.
Which leads to the question:
Who's the host and who's the passenger?
If that's not tactical enough, then there's this juicy tidbit:
70-80% of your immune system is in your gut.
Whatāre the ārulesā?
āRulesā because I try not to be too dogmatic about stuff like this. And because I have some family celebrations this month and nothing says party less than ālet me tell you about this weird health thing Iām trying as an answer to why Iām not having that.ā
- No alcohol (the little buggers donāt like it)
- Go (mostly) vegan (again)
- Focus on fiber and fermented foods (minimum 38 grams fiber daily, ideally 50+, and at least one fermented thing each day)
- Avoid processed foods
- Eat lots of sprouts (because theyāre good for you. And because Iām a sprouthead.)
- 1 cup of beans per day (over the long term this could add about 4 years to your life expectancy. Also, theyāre delicious.)
Not specific to Gutuary, but still good for my bacterial host:
- Get outside every day
- Run a lot (planning on the Born to Run 2 training protocol)
Want more?
If you can't wait for my deep dive, here are some resources to dig in now:
- The Anti-Viral Gut episode of the Rich Roll podcast
- The How to Heal Your Gut episode of the Rich Roll podcast (has a link for a PDF resource if you want even more)
- The Whole Body Mental Health episode of the On Being podcast
- And 6 key tools for improving microbiome health from Dr. Andrew Huberman (many are mentioned above).