Do you need a gut coach?
The gut has spent most of human evolution being majorly misunderstood. It’s not just down there lazily sampling our last meal as we once thought. It’s considered the body’s largest sensory organ, with an incredible number of nerves, as well as trillions of bacteria collectively known as the microbiome. It is “just as large and complex as the grey matter in our heads”, says Giulia Enders in her book Gut. But up until the past 10 years or so, no-one knew why it had so much power. “No body would create such a neural network just to enable us to break wind,” Enders wrote. “There must be more to it than that.”
And now we know. The microbiome is responsible for . It breaks down food, divvies out energy and vitamins, produces mood-altering chemicals and eliminates toxins. It intercepts hormones and chats to cells, then sends messages up to the brain via the vagus nerve. How well the microbiome performs depends on how well we feed it, with an unhealthy microbiome being linked to all sorts of ailments, from the obviously gut-related (obesity and irritable bowel syndrome) to the more elusive (acne and bad moods).
