Parallax by Ankur Kalra

“We're providing about 20,000 different ingredients in our diet to a gut microbiome that has 4 million genes. And they're processing these 20,000 ingredients at a flood of chemicals.” In this episode of Parallax, Dr Ankur Kalra speaks with Dr. Momchilo Vuyisich, co-founder and chief science officer of Viome Life Sciences. Dr Vuyisich shares his personal journey with rheumatoid arthritis and how it led him to explore the intersection of nutrition and the gut microbiome function. He explains how the complexity of nutrition and the compounds generated by the gut microbiome can impact our health. We learn more about three compounds produced by our gut microbiome that have a strong connection with heart disease. Through this conversation, Dr Vuyisich invites us to reframe our approach to nutrition and prevention as a question of food education and data-driven science. What is the effect of red meat and processed food on our gut biome? What can we learn about prevention through understanding gut biome function?