Following an interest in the digestive system resulting from her own health issues, Enders trained as a Doctor with a specialist interest in the gut. In 2012 her presentation at the Berlin Science Slam went viral on YouTube and led to her writing this book.
Enders has a clear enthusiasm for her subject but punctuates this with a whimsical sense of humour that makes the complexity of the digestive system much easier to understand. The book poses questions “ever wondered why breath smells” – and then goes on to answer them in some detail. For those of you (like me) who give some thought about what we eat but not about the process of digestion this is a fascinating read. GUT explains how food is digested and how the system plays a crucial part in our immune system. The bacteria that we encounter early in life play a critical role in determining health. The book starts “I was born by a caesarean section, and was not able to breast feed….If I had known more about the gut back then I could have placed bets on what illnesses I would contract in later life”. She goes on to describe how the bad breath of someone she met at a party may have been a factor in his suicide the next day.
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GUT – the inside story of our body’s most under-rated organ : Giulia Enders (Scribe 2015)
Those of you who were at the January Transition Café will have heard me enthusing about this book – and it is – by some way- my favourite book of last year. So when I was asked to write a blog post about it I was more than happy to re-read it in order to oblige.
What do I like about it? Well it is short (apart from references it comes in at less than 250 pages) it has pictures (cartoons drawn by the writer’s sister – which really do add to your understanding) and it is beautifully well written. More than that though, GUT gives you a renewed appreciation in the way in which the Human body is absolutely integrated into the ecosystem. Did you, for example, realise that there are 10 times as many bacteria cells within your digestive system than there are cells in your whole body? If that doesn’t seem to make sense the bacteria are a lot smaller.
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The role that bacteria play in the human body is an area of rapidly developing research. Up to about a decade ago it was assumed that we all had relatively similar bacteria – it is now recognised that what we ingest plays a huge part in determining what bacteria exist within us and this in turn has an impact upon our mood, energy, body size and life span. Most of the bacteria within our digestive system live in the large intestine and get to work after the majority of nutrients have been absorbed – some bacteria help to absorb useful nutrients into the body by breaking down substances and detoxify some substances, others can lead to vitamin and mineral depletion. There are three families of bacteria with different characteristics, as well as breaking down food they may also influence the development of other gut flora by attacking or “helping” bacteria from the other two groups.
So what does all this mean? What it boils down to for me is that our gut is a garden and we can make some choices about what we grow there. Using this analogy then it appears that taking anti biotics (which undoubtedly have their value at times) is the equivalent of liberally spraying glycophosphate. If we decimate the flora in our gut then new bacteria will colonise and it may be that this places stress on the digestive, hormonal and immune systems. Enders is cautious about the benefits of “good bacteria” type products but does make some specific recommendations about diet – specifically she recommends avoiding non-organic meat (although there are now EU restrictions on the use of antibiotics as “performance enhancers” in meat production they are not strongly enforced in many countries). Animals given regular courses of antibiotics have guts that are “giant breeding zoos resistant bacteria”. Enders advises us to wash fruit and vegetables thoroughly and take particular care when holidaying abroad as new and interesting bacteria may inhabit your gut – most temporarily but some proving harder to dislodge.
You can order “GUT” with Liverpool’s independent book sellers News From Nowhere via this link or you can hear a ten minute clip of Giulia Enders at the Science Slam on You Tube – it has sub titles though so don’t try and listen to it whilst you’re cooking.
Hope you liked this review – if you have a subject that you’d like to do a short piece on why not suggest it on an email to transitionliverpool@gmail.com
Review written by Lisa Hoyle
Lisa works as the outreach worker at Liverpool Quakers and is also part of the Transition Liverpool organising team
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