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After “drink more water”, what’s the most popular advice you get when you’re trying to fix any digestive issue?

Eat more fiber!

It’s common knowledge that eating more fiber will help increase your gut bacteria, and more bacteria will make you healthier, right?

Surprisingly, no.

Recent evidence points to the contrary: more gut bacteria isn’t necessarily healthy, and in people with digestive issues, it’s extremely harmful.

So if eating more fiber isn’t the solution to all your gut problems, what is?

Today, Dr. Michael Ruscio joins me to answer this question and more.

Dr. Ruscio is a leading functional medicine practitioner specializing in gut-related disorders, a clinical researcher whose work has been published in peer-reviewed medical journals, international lecturer, and best-selling author.

He has dedicated his entire career to studying the gut and all the complex relationships that affect it.

His research led him to publish his best-selling book, Healthy Gut, Healthy You — in which he tears apart popular (and dangerous) gut health myths, reveals how your gut microbiota works and explains how to fix your gut health with an evidence-based approach.

Your gut microbiota is a complex and still highly misunderstood network — and misinformation about what to eat only contributes to chronic gut issues.

In our chat, Dr. Ruscio clarifies how your gut microbiota behaves, what it needs, and what you can do to keep it balanced and thriving.

In this episode, we go over:

Why eating more fiber isn’t the key a balanced, healthy gut bacteria
Why people with digestive issues can benefit from eating less fiber, less prebiotic foods, and having lower gut bacteria
Why your small intestine is the most important region when it comes to gut health
Why small intestine bacteria overgrowth can wreck your health
The 6 types of foods to remove from your diet to lower your gut bacteria
Why the same bacteria strains can have different effects in different people
How your immune system influences your gut microbiota
How inflammation alters your gut bacteria
Why different parts of your gut microbiota need different types of bacteria
The complex relationship between lifestyle habits and gut bacteria
What a low FODMAP diet is
How a high FODMAP and low FODMAP diet affect your gut
How to use a low FODMAP diet to improve gut health
Why chronic high blood sugar can worsen your digestive health
Why too much testing in functional medicine is problematic and unhelpful
Why Dr. Ruscio believes testing is overrated
Why Dr. Ruscio decided to specialize in gut disorders
The multiple benefits of taking probiotics
The 3 different types of probiotics and which one to pick
How to take probiotics in the long-term