PULL UP A STOOL AND LISTEN. GUT HEALTH IS HERE TO STAY.

Gut health , are the words on everyone’s lips and – spoiler alert – this isn’t necessarily about restriction, and it certainly isn’t about detoxing and skinny teatoxin. We’re only beginning to touch the tip of the iceberg in research into our second brain, our partner in crime, the dennis to our menace – our gut.

Look, nutrition and how we look after our bodies is tough, it’s personal, it’s complex and it’s downright confusing, but it doesn’t have to be scary and it CERTAINLY doesn’t have to be pricey. We do not, contrary to popular belief, have to stand on our heads drinking green kale smoothies and chanting ‘ommmmm’.

We should know, we were brought up on deep-fried pizzas in Scotland, but that all changed when we volunteered for twin research at the world-leading King’s College Hospital and had our gut bacteria analysed on a highly processed diet vs a highfibre-diet with lots of variety. Some of the tests were quite gruelling, so lucky for us (and them!) the researchers made some scientific breakthroughs discovering that even though we had 100% the same DNA, we only had around 30-40% the same gut bacteria. We know now that different species of gut bacteria thrive on different diets and lifestyles. Which means that if we can’t be sold the same diet/lifestyle then NO ONE can and also that we ALL have the power to change our gut microbiome (that’s the ecosystem of bacteria living in our guts and their genetic material).

As we were going through the research, we were meeting scientists from loads of different departments and realising that the gut microbiome seems to not only affect digestive health but LOADS of other things, and we realised we needed to tell people about it all… from mental health through to your immune system! But let’s face it, talkin’ about the gut isn’t sexy, just googling it brings up a rather disturbing mosaic of beer bellies and intestinal diagrams, so it’s no wonder we’re all confused. Four in 10 of us have a digestive issue at any given time and we’d rather talk about ANYTHING else than our gurgling midriff and toilet-dashing, SO here at the Gut Stuff we want to break the poo taboo and provide a platform for people to delve into the world of gut health.