The One Supplement She Recommends For Everyone!

Scott: We talked about a lot of foods that are bad.  I think a lot of people will agree that our overall health starts in our gut.  What's some of the best things for our gut health, in terms of food?

JJ Virgin:  So in terms of food, fermented foods are amazing.  And I actually, my girlfriend Donna Gates, wrote The Body Ecology Diet, and I had her help me make fermented foods, which were totally scary to me because we were not raised on those.  So picked ginger and saurkraut, so we made that stuff together and I'd sit and eat it with her.  I thought I was going to be like Tom Hanks in Big, plegh, plegh!  I'm not going to say I love it, but I was like 'I can do this.'

But what I do instead, you want to really do some kind of fermented food every day, now it's WINE.  But not really.  Dark chocolate actually, is a fermented food, so wine and dark chocolate.  But what I have instead is I do a fermented coconut water.  So that's how I get some fermented food in every day.  If we can eat a little fermented food every day, it's fantastic because it will start to help you make the good flora in your gut.  

Now there's things like inulin and chicory that, prebiotics that can feed the good bacteria in the gut as well.  A lot of fiber, because fiber can give you these short chained fatty acids that feed the good bacteria, so that's critical too.  There's one supplement that I think is so cool, that everybody should be taking and that is something called a bacteriophage.  Bacteriophages are basically natures antibiotics.  And they're called 'phage' to eat, because they go in there and they eat up the bad bacteria.  People have heard of prebiotics and probiotics.  Prebiotics can be a little tough to take because they can give you gas.  Like inulin, if you take too much.  Probiotics, you've got to make sure that you've really created an environment where they can really take hold.  But these bacteriophages act like prebiotics and go and eat the bad bacteria.

And what you're trying to do in your gut... part of it is, yes, eat all these things that are going to help build the good bacteria.  But the other part of that is, stop eating the stuff that's feeding the bad bacteria.  You've got to take out that stuff.  And that's really the sugar and artificial sweeteners.  Those are the things that are really crashing out the bad bacteria in the gut.  So if you take those out, you eat a good, fiber rich diet, hugely important.  You have a nice acid/alkaline balance, lots of vegetables.  And then a lot of the vegetables have great fiber and prebiotics in them too like artichokes, amazing.  And then fermented foods, you've got it covered.