In this episode of the Mind Gut Conversation podcast, I speak to professor Joel Dore, an internationally known expert on the gut microbiome and Research Director at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment, INRAE.

Joel’s main research interest is the molecular assessment of the human intestinal microbiota in health and disease and investigation of the molecular cross-talk between intestinal bacteria and human cells. He has published more than 220 publications in peer reviewed scientific journals.

We discuss a wide range of topics, including the following questions:

1. Utility of currently available stool microbiome tests. 2. Are the unique characteristics of the gut microbiome adaptions to a rapidly changing environment including diet, medications, environmental chemicals like forever chemical, microplastics, other xenobiotics, causing a mismatch with our very slowly changing innate immune system which isn’t able to keep up?3. Is there solid evidence to say that gut microbial diversity and richness plays a role in resilience to several diseases?4. What are the major clinical applications of microbiome science?