David Zeevi on Personalized Nutrition Based on Your Gut Microbiome

David Zeevi – https://twitter.com/davezeevi – is a James S. McDonnell independent fellow at the Rockefeller University Center for Studies in Physics and Biology. He focuses on developing computational methods for studying microbial ecology in the human gut and in the marine environment, and its contribution to human and environmental health.

He was one of the authors on the paper Personalized Nutrition by Prediction of Glycemic Responses – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26590418

The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon – https://twitter.com/craigcannon

Read the transcript here – https://blog.ycombinator.com/david-zeevi-on-personalized-nutrition-based-on-your-gut-microbiome

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Topics

00:40 – Why did David start working on personalized nutrition?

4:10 – How did the measure the effects of food in their study?

11:20 – How was the study standardized across people?

15:20 – How they measured an individual’s gut microbiome.

16:55 – What is the gut microbiome?

21:30 – Is there an ideal gut microbiome?

22:45 – How do you manipulate your gut microbiome?

24:15 – Fecal transplants.

26:20 – Elizabeth Iorns asks – Does post prandial glucose response regulation track with weight regulation? I.e. can they use their test to determine what individual people should eat or not eat to lose weight?

28:00 – Has this research been turned into a product?

29:00 – Who else worked on this research?

30:00 – How was their predictive algorithm made?

34:40 – Did they end up with any dietary suggestions?

35:40 – David’s bread study – https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/abstract/S1550-4131

38:20 – Has David changed his own diet?

38:50 – Why fat was vilified.

42:40 – David’s ocean microbiome and other research.

50:30 – Traveling and your microbiome.

56:00 – Trying this out yourself.