Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ

by Giulia Enders

The study involved only nine children, which means it is not particularly meaningful in scientific terms, but it remains the only study of its kind so far.

Do not take antibiotics unless it is really necessary. And if you do have to take them, then always complete the course. This is because resistance fighters who are less skilled will eventually give up the cause and succumb to the drug.

Choose organically farmed meat.

Wash fruit and vegetables thoroughly.

Take care abroad. One traveler in four returns home carrying highly resistant bacteria. Most disappear in a few months, but some lurk around for much longer.

“Cook it, peel it, or leave it” is not only a good rule for avoiding diarrhea, it also protects against unwanted resistant souvenirs for you and your family.

Pharmacies sell concentrated plant antibiotics to treat developing cold symptoms, urinary infections, and inflammations in the mouth and throat.

A well-informed doctor will not prescribe antibiotics for every little thing—but will tell you in no uncertain terms when they are really necessary.

A group of South Americans had to learn that through bitter experience. They had the clever idea of taking pregnant women to the South Pole to have their babies. The plan was that the babies born there could stake a claim to any oil future reserves as natives of the region. The babies did not survive. They died soon after birth or on the way back to South America. The South Pole is so cold and germ-free that the infants simply did not get the bacteria they needed to survive. The normal temperatures and bacteria the babies encountered after leaving the Antarctic were enough to kill them.

To summarize: any yogurt can be good for you, although not everyone can tolerate milk protein or too much animal fat.

Many probiotic bacteria take good care of our gut. They possess genes that enable them to produce small fatty acids like butyrate. This soothes and pampers the villi in the gut. Pampered villi are much more stable and likely to grow bigger than unpampered ones.

Good for treating diarrhea. This is the number-one use for probiotics. Gastroenteritis (stomach flu) and diarrhea caused by taking antibiotics can be helped using various pharmacy-bought bacteria.

Good for the immune system. For people who tend to get sick often, it can be a good idea to try different probiotics, especially when colds are rife.

upon a bacterium that seems to help. The packaging should always include the name of the bacteria the product contains. Try it for about four weeks and if you see no improvement, give a different bacterium a go.

The rules are the same for all probiotics. You should try them for about four weeks and make sure they are still within the best-before date (otherwise sufficient bacteria may not have survived to have any effect on the huge ecosystem of the gut).

There is one limitation to the efficacy of all current probiotics we take: they are isolated species of bacteria bred in the lab. As soon as we stop taking them, they mostly disappear from our gut.

Some companies are already working to develop artificial stool that they can guarantee is free of any harmful elements. If they succeed, the therapy is likely to become much more widespread.

The central idea surrounding the use of prebiotics is to support our good bacteria by eating certain foods. Prebiotics are much more suitable for daily use than probiotics. To gain the benefits they offer, just one condition must be met: good bacteria must already be present in the gut. These can then be encouraged by eating prebiotic food, which gives the good bacteria more power over any bad bacteria that may also be present.

Household sugar is not a prebiotic, for example, because it is also a favorite of tooth-decay bacteria.

We now know that they prefer vegetables from the lily family (Liliaceae), which includes leeks and asparagus, onions, and garlic.

Resistant starches form, for example, when potatoes or rice are boiled and then left to cool. This allows the starches to crystalize, making them more resistant to digestion. This means that more of your potato salad or cold sushi rice reaches your microbes untouched.

Overproduction of gas is not a pleasant thing—it bloats the gut, making us feel uncomfortable—but passing a bit of wind is not only necessary, it is healthy, too.

People who never need to break wind are starving their gut bacteria and are not good hosts for their microbe guests.

If bottle-fed babies are given formula milk that contains a little GOS powder, their gut bacteria looks similar to that of breast-fed babies. Some studies indicate that they are less prone to allergies and neurodermatitis in later life than other bottle-fed babies. GOS has been approved as an additive to infant milk formula for a few years, but it is not obligatory.

Sweetness is not in itself unhealthy, we simply eat only the most unhealthy kind of sweetness.

But a product that contains inulin as a sugar or fat substitute may well be healthier than one with a full dose of animal fat or sugar.