Janice Clyne: Gut Health Guru

When it comes to taking control of our own health and wellbeing the key message from Janice Clyne, Scotland’s very own gut health guru, is clear: eat real food.

Janice and I are meeting over a plant-based lunch which has more gut friendly diversity points than we can count and as always her energy and passion lights up the room. Now in her 60’s, with clearer skin than any twenty-something could hope for and the kind of sparkle in her eye which can only come from enviable health on the inside, she’s a walking advert for good nutrition. This is a woman who is in her element, that beautiful place where passion and talent collide, devoting her life to empowering others in the pursuit of finding health and wellbeing through food.

“I’m fermented inside and outside,” she tells me. “I put fermented stuff on my skin, I drink kombucha and kefir, I make all sorts of fantastic fermented veggies in all the colours of the rainbow. I eat plant-based, I’m a member of the foraging association so I’m getting diversity from wild stuff too and I honestly feel better the older I get. I can’t possibly go back to not doing this stuff and I have to share this with people.”

With a background in food science Janice has always been immersed in food research, putting a PhD in whisky maturation to the side to raise her four gorgeous girls. In 2011 however, a return to research, this time focusing on macrobiotics, introduced Janice to new foods such as kimchi, tempeh, tofu, sourdough bread and sauerkraut and it was this focus that piqued her interest in the health benefits of food.

“The people who eat that kind of traditional diet have got a fraction of the health problems we have. Japan and China have about 2% of the breast cancer cases that we have and in Japan they don’t even have a word for the menopause because they don’t suffer from it because of the way they eat. They eat a really balanced diet. Things like seaweed, tamari, ginger and garlic are all very much a part of it. It’s pretty much plant-based with some fish but there’s no meat, no processed stuff, no sugar.”

For Janice it was this research that set her on the path to experimenting with fermentation, a topic she’s passionate about for good reason.

“Your gut controls everything. There’s a massive gut-brain axis. It’s your gut that tells your brain what to do. It’s your gut microbiome that instructs your immune system what to do. 90% of your neurotransmitters are produced in your gut by your gut microbes. When you start eating fermented foods you start to crave them and that’s your gut microbiome telling your brain what it wants to eat. Fermented foods are the quickest way for anybody to sort their health out because what you’re doing is sending in the reinforcements to support the good guys in your gut. The good bacteria which multiplies throughout the fermentation process has the ability to transform every area of our health. It’s rocket fuel for our gut bacteria.”

With such unparalleled and well documented benefits though, we have to question how the food industry has got it so wrong for so long, opting for fast over slow and processed over real, manipulating our tastebuds to fit an industry which seems hell bent on moving us further and further away from real food.

“Fast food has created chronic disease on an epic scale and chronic obesity. We cannot improve on what nature has given us. We need to stop piling in the things which are disturbing our gut balance.”

And the things which disturb that balance won’t come as a surprise to you: emulsifiers, artificial sweeteners, ultra processed foods, excess sugar and excess alcohol being the biggest offenders. As Janice confirms, they’re the foods we need to avoid if we want to improve our own gut health.

“In the UK we’ve adopted a diet which is less diverse and more processed – a damaging combination for gut health. Current recommendations suggest we eat at least 30 ‘diversity points’ (plant-based sources of fibre) a week because different bacteria thrive on different foods and we need to nurture the good bacteria as fully as possible. It’s in the diversity that we create the best gut health. Add as many different plants into your diet as possible, including seasonal and wild foraged foods (for reference there’s 50 times more nutrition in nettles than spinach). We need to get more plants in. It’s all about plants. In my opinion fibre is the most important part of our diet because it’s the building block for our trillions of bacteria.”

There’s one particular bacteria causing a stir in the world of lifestyle medicine right now which, as Janice explains, throws into question the whole notion of calories in, calories out. It’s not great news for the diet industry but it’s interesting news for the rest of us.

“There’s one microbe called the akkermansia muciniphila which is found in quite high amounts in people who are generally lean and who don’t tend to put on weight easily. People who struggle to lose weight generally have very low levels so it’s not always about the calories you put in, it’s about what your body is doing with these calories. Akkermansia seems to be incredibly efficient at taking what it needs and getting rid of the rest. If you don’t have high levels of akkermansia (and want to increase the number) there are foods which it prefers, and this is where the diversity comes in. It loves pomegranate, cranberries, kiwi fruit, walnuts and many more.”

Interest in gut health has rocketed, particularly since Covid, and Janice is building a fast growing following of like-minded individuals, not just through her food workshops and social media channels but also through her Wellness Hub, a thriving on-line community for members all proactively exploring food as medicine and striving to prevent, rather than cure, the many modern ills we face.

“It doesn’t matter where you are with your health, you can start to change it. You can change your gut health around in a matter of weeks, days even if you start getting fermented foods in.”

Tending to our gut garden, it seems, brings countless benefits and the good news is, it’s a journey to better health which we can all begin no matter our starting point.

To find out more about Janice, you can follow her here:

Instagram @benourishedbynature

Facebook @nourishedbynature

Web: nourishedbynature.co.uk

*This interview was first published in Ayrshire Magazine