The immune system, mood, digestion, energy… The intestine and the entire digestive system play an essential role in keeping your whole body functioning in a healthy way.
The gut is home to the microbiome, made up of billions of bacterial microbiota, and the quality and diversity of these bacteria are key to our health and happiness. Although probiotics and kombucha have become very fashionable in recent years, good intestinal health goes beyond consuming these products.
There is a new TV show in England called ‘Know Your Sh*t: Inside Our Guts’. This program explores the world of intestinal health and its intrinsic relationship with the body and the brain.
The twins hosting the show, Lisa and Alana Macfarlane, were pizza-and-fry-loving DJS in their twenties until one day they took part in a Twinuk scientific study of the gut microbiome, led by Professor Tim Spector, an epidemiologist who dedicates its time to investigate these bacteria in the gut.
They quickly discovered that despite being genetically identical, their gut microbiomes were very different: ‘We both only have 30% of the same gut bacteria; Knowing this made us think very differently about health and our well-being.’ ‘Our bacterial diversity was very low before participating in the study; we had a very uphill lifestyle.’
From mailing stool samples to colonoscopies, the two were Professor Spector’s ‘guinea pigs’, putting themselves through rigorous tests: ‘Tim put us on a diet where we had to drink alcohol and eat only food processed for the first month, and then to a fiber-rich vegetable diet for the second’, they explain. What they learned being part of the studio, they share through their platform, The Gut Stuff, and now also through Channel 4’s signal.
a health routine
“What we want most is for people to learn the importance of the intestine and how important the digestive system is,” the twins explain. ‘We thought that the intestine was only our stomach, but very soon we realized that it actually extends from the mouth to the end. In the program, people with different intestinal problems, from constipation to bloating or excessive flatulence, visit the experts of the program in an attempt to understand why these symptoms appear and how to treat them successfully,’ they explain to me.
In addition to gastroenterologist Dr Rabia Topan and dietitian Sophie Medlin, some guests visit a psychologist and an immunologist, illustrating how intertwined mental well-being and gut health are: ‘Sometimes it’s not just dietary interventions it’s holistic practices like breathwork and hypnotherapy that help,’ reveals Alana. This alone “can help us begin to understand that stress, which many of us experience every day, can really affect our gut and therefore our general state of health.”
Achieving a healthy gut microbiome does not require crash diets or expensive probiotic supplements, but rather a more careful approach to a health and wellness routine and adding plenty of vegetables to the diet. You also have to give priority to sleep (which affects the intestine a lot) and goes hand in hand with stress’, explains Lisa, ‘for us, at first, anything that was a bit of well-being was unattainable and a bit mystical, and that did not interest us. But the things you will learn in this program are accessible and affordable for everyone. And that is the most important’.
