How to have a healthy gut

The secret to ageing well could rest within your gut, which scientists now know plays a crucial role in important body systems, including immunity, metabolism and even how happy we can feel. Here’s how to maximise your gut health so everything else ticks along nicely.

- BROOKE LE POER TRENCH

Hippocrates gave us the heads up around 320BC when he said all disease begins in the gut. If only we’d taken his word for it. The good news is that science has caught up, and we now know that our gut microbiome – a term that describes the trillions of bacteria and microbes that live there – plays a crucial role in our health and sense of well-being. “The depth of the microbiota is hard to fathom,” says Will Bulsiewicz MD, a gastroenterologist and author of an excellent new book called Fiber Fueled. “The numbers are so astronomical … and it’s a wondrous magical community with amazing healing powers.” Even better, it’s possible to change the health of your gut with your next mouthful.

In the dark

Given the power the gut wields, it’s a wonder GPs don’t bang on about it constantly. Dr Bulsiewicz says that’s because this discovery is relatively new. We have known microbes live inside us for a long time (since 1683, to be exact), but our gut microbiome has resisted scientific breakthroughs because most of our microbes don’t survive on a petri-dish. Then in the early 2000s, researchers figured out how to sequence their DNA, and we started to learn.