Episode 009 Kristen Stavridis – gut health influencers, improving gut health through diet, the power of social media

Visit our website for full show notes and guest information - https://insidematters.health/episodes/kristen-stavridis

Kristen Stavridis is a nutritionist and speaker based in London who focuses on gut health and how we can improve this through healthy eating and lifestyle. She is also the creator of The Gut Health Programme, a programme which has helped over 800 people improve their gut microbiome and overall well-being. Her main aim is to help educate people both on social media and in person about how important diet is and its importance in improving our gut and digestion.

To learn more about Kristen, you can follow her on social media: @thatnextlevelgirl

For rapid improvements to gut health and the microbiome, Kristen recommends her ‘gut reset diet’, in which gluten, alcohol, coffee, dairy and processed sugars are cut out completely for 30 days. Following this, her recommendation is to adopt a 70:30 and 80:20 approach in which 30% or 20% of the diet/lifestyle is relaxed and 70% or 80% is ‘on plan’. As part of the gut reset protocol, Kristen also recommends that her clients take a symbiotic - a combination of a prebiotic and a probiotic. Beyond the gut reset diet, the simplest and most effective change to make to support your microbiome and gut health is to convert to a predominantly plant-based diet and eat a variety of plants every day. Kristen recommends properly washing fruits and vegetables due to pesticides being present on the surface of the food. To do this effectively, Kirsten has developed a process in which vegetables and fruit are put into a clean sink filled with water that has been supplemented with a tablespoon of baking soda and apple cider vinegar for 12-15 minutes. Kristen recommends avoiding sugar-free/artificially sweetened drinks as these have demonstrably negative impacts on the microbiome. 1:20 bloating 2:10 what is the gut 6:15 gut health symptoms 8:10 gut health influencers 11:17 Kristen's journey and the gut health programme 18:38 gut health programme results 22:15 bloating 25:50 gut health and social media 30:52 Home microbiome testing (good clip) 34:30 Best microbiome foods and diet 38:55 GMOs and red meat 41:06 The microbiome and the skin 49:24 cravings and the microbiome 52:33 dietary plans on the gut reset diet 1:01:32 Prebiotics and probiotics 1:06:14 protein supplementation 1:07:22 Artificial sweeteners and sugar-free drinks 1:13:18 Juice diets 1:17:57 Kristen's diet 1:24:00 FODMAP diets 1:26:30 Stress 1:29:11 Vegetarian / vegan diets 1:30:40 Gut health basics 1:35:17 Mushroom