> WHERE TO LEARN ABOUT THE GUT MICROBIOME:

Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ by Giulia Enders Enders, a 26-year-old German scientist, started researching the gut after she developed a skin disease at age 17. She became fascinated with the subject, enrolled in a PhD program in gastroenterology and went on to write Gut in 2014. It’s topped international bestseller lists and captivated gut nuts with explorations of communication between the gut and the brain, the gut and gluten intolerance and the gut and your mood. The Good Gut: Taking Control of Your Weight, Your Mood, and Your Long Term Health by Justin and Erica Sonnenburg Published in 2015, The Good Gut explores strategies for nourishing the microbiome though lifestyle changeups in the hopes of achieving better health. The Sonnen- burgs, a married couple and Stanford University microbiome researchers, wrote the book after realizing their daughter was suffering from constipation. They changed up the whole family’s diet, solving their daughter’s problem. Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues by Martin Blaser In his 2014 book, Missing Microbes, Blaser explores links between the overuse of antibiotics — around since the 1940s — and “modern plagues” such as obesity, asthma, allergies, certain cancers and diabetes. Blaser, a medical doctor and director of the Human Microbiome Program at New York University, also examines the consequences of C-sections, which deprive babies of important bacteria from their mothers and says antibiotics given to children in early years pose great risks to their long-term health.