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    The Gut Stuff: An empowering guide to your gut and its microbes
    The Gut Stuff: An empowering guide to your gut and its microbes
    The Gut Stuff: An empowering guide to your gut and its microbes
    Ebook226 pages2 hours

    The Gut Stuff: An empowering guide to your gut and its microbes

    By Lisa Macfarlane and Alana Macfarlane

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    About this ebook

    ‘We became the ‘chief guinea pigs’ for the British Gut Project where we discovered that despite us having 100% the same DNA our guts have only 40% the same microbiota… Thus our ‘gut journey’ began.’

    With practical advice throughout from gut experts, this is a fact-packed, achievable guide for better health.

    With a foreword by Tim Spector. Alana and Lisa Macfarlane have spent the past few years interviewing tons of gut experts: scientists, academics, chefs and foodies to get the real scoop and science behind what we eat. We now know how important the gut is to our health and wellbeing, including its impact on our immune system and on diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and even mental health, but The Gut Stuff arms the reader with practical knowledge and tangible tips – both lifestyle and dietary – so they can make easy and life-changing decisions.

    Chapters include: Back to School – biology and the microbiome; Mind and Body – the gut and immunity, the gut and exercise, the gut and skin, the gut-brain axis, the gut and sleep, the gut and hormones; Scientific Interlude on Pre- and Probiotics; Bullsh*t Bin – mythbusting nutrition nonsense; What Can You Do – top tips to support your gut; I've Gutta Problem – common digestive issues; The Future of Science; The Gut Glossary.

    With practical advice from gut experts, from how to de-stress for your gut to the affects of alcohol on the gut, this is an achievable guide for better health.

    Experts include: The Rooted Project, Kimberley Wison, Dr Chris Lutterodt, Professor Glenn Gibson, John Cryan and Ted Dinan, Jenna Macciochi, Miguel Mateas, Renee McGregor, Ruairi Roberston, Sophie Medlin, Dr Rabia and Dr Gautam Mehta.

    ‘Twins are a great constant for medical research and we became the ‘chief guinea pigs’ for the British Gut project where we discovered that despite us having 100% the same DNA our guts have only 40% the same microbiota, which could explain why our bodies behave so differently. Thus our ‘gut journey’ began.’

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateJan 7, 2021
    ISBN9781911663775
    The Gut Stuff: An empowering guide to your gut and its microbes
    Author

    Lisa Macfarlane

    The Gut Stuff was born in 2017 by co-founders Lisa and Alana Macfarlane (The Mac Twins).  They made it their mission to bring the exciting information they were learning, to the masses (not just the 'wellbeing aware' middle classes) and have since made www.thegutstuff.com the global millennial thought leader in the space. They’ve gained their profile through The Mac Twins DJ’ing  and presenting, and whether performing all over the world for Diet Coke, Armani, MAC Cosmetics, on tour with the UK’s biggest music institution The Official Charts, their primetime radio slots both with Virgin and BBC Radio 1xtra, or opening festival stages across Europe, The Mac Twins’ unique talent is their ability to connect with any audience – large or small – and keep it real.

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      Book preview

      The Gut Stuff - Lisa Macfarlane

      IllustrationIllustrationIllustration

      what’s inside?

      (other than your gut ;) )

      foreword

      introduction

      Illustration back to school

      biology (and a dash of music)

      microbiome 101

      modern studies/politics

      Illustration mind and body

      the gut and...

      ...immunity

      ...excercise

      ...skin

      ...brain - a tennis match (yes, really!)

      ...sleep

      ...hormones

      Illustration scientific interlude on pre- and probiotics

      Illustration bullsh*t bin (sorry mum!)

      myth-busting toolkit

      Illustration what can you do?

      fermented food – is there evidence?

      simple swaps

      alcohol

      de-stress

      other sh*t you should know

      Illustration i’ve gutta problem

      Illustration the future of science

      Illustration gut glossary

      foreword

      As Director of the Department of Twin Research at King’s College London I have come across many thousands of twins over the years. None are like the Mac twins! Alana and Lisa have an amazing infectious enthusiasm, intelligence and passion for research, and disseminating that science to the public. They quickly became my go-to twin guinea pigs to road-test new research projects.

      I met them around 10 years ago when they answered my call to participate on an epigenetic research project where I was looking at why identical twins could often look identical but be quite different in many ways. They ended up being a great case study in my book, Identically Different with their different personalities and gut problems. They then eagerly volunteered for more studies and went on to being the very first participants in a pilot study for our novel research project into the gut microbiome and nutrition. This study involved having all kinds of biopsies, plenty of poo samples and eating several weeks of junk food. Luckily they were performing at the Edinburgh festival where this was readily available. They survived this ordeal followed by four weeks of healthy vegetarian high-fibre food. Their results showed us that we could alter the gut microbes with diet and allowed us to start the big study in hundreds more twins and open up the whole field.

      The research evolved into the world’s largest personalised nutrition study with the help of a company called ZOE – called the PREDICT study. The twins were, once again, the first guinea pigs and had to say how they reacted differently to the identical foods, blue muffins (and prosecco). They made the point brilliantly of how unique all of us are. They both were fascinated by the science of the trillions of microbes living in our gut that are essential to our immunity and overall health and how looking after them through a diverse and varied diet could help prevent many modern health conditions. As identical twins they are used to sharing all their genes, but suddenly they have something that is unique to them – the microbes in their gut. Through their participation in the research, they never stopped asking ever tougher and more intelligent questions about the science of the microbiome and, most importantly, they showed a unique talent not just for processing complicated scientific concepts but for translating them to a non-scientific audience in a fun and highly informative manner.

      I was not surprised when they went on to found the incredibly successful The Gut Stuff, a platform to empower gut health for everyone.

      This book is their next step in their efforts to make microbes, the science of gut health and nutrition available for everyone and show that science does not have to be boring. Through their ability to attract and talk to the best experts in the field they have managed to summarise a wealth of scientific knowledge and different viewpoints to educate a young audience on what they need to do to maintain and enhance their health. I was asked on a nutrition panel recently – what single factor is the most important in changing nutrition? I replied, ‘educating everybody, even at school’. As my own books, The Diet Myth and Spoon-Fed underline, there is a real need for better nutritional health that demystifies food and nutrition. Alana and Lisa’s book deserves top place in the list of books every young and not-so young person should read, because as they themselves say, Gut health is serious shit. Enjoy.

      Illustration

      Tim Spector

      Professor of Genetic Epidemiology, King’s College London

      Author of Spoon-Fed (2020) and The Diet Myth (2016).

      Illustration

      introduction

      Let’s face it, talking about the gut ain’t sexy. Just googling ‘gut’ brings up a rather disturbing mosaic of beer bellies, intestinal diagrams and, the main reason for our misconceptions, perfectly manicured hands cupping toned, soft stomachs. It’s no wonder we’re all confused.

      So many of us have digestive issues at any given time, but we’d rather talk about ANYTHING else than our gurgling midriff and toilet dashing. So, from this sentence on, this is where that STOPS. You are now entering an open ‘poo chat’ forum and you wanna know why? Because it’s important, really important. Hippocrates saw it many moons ago when he said:

      Illustration

      all disease begins in the gut

      For some reason we’ve chosen to bury that knowledge. So, get your little archaeological spades and hats out, as we’re about to discover what Hippocrates was on about for the good of our health. Look, nutrition is COMPLEX. Even the experts say so and, trust us, we were not experts. We had done every fad diet under the sun, including the cabbage soup diet pre-Magaluf 2005 (remember that?), and grew up in Scotland eating deep-fried pizza and chips, plus all of Edinburgh’s supply of yum yums. We only knew what kale was because we used to feed it to the guinea pig on his birthday. That all flip-reversed when we volunteered to be part of the TwinsUK research at King’s College London.

      Being identical twins, we have a passion (teetering on obsession) for finding out what’s different about us and to do this we looked inside ourselves, as there isn’t much that’s different on the outside. Twins are a great constant for medical research, and we became the ‘chief guinea pigs’ for the British Gut Project. We discovered that despite having 100% of the same DNA, our guts share only 30–40% of the same microbiota, which could explain why our bodies behave so differently. And so our ‘gut journey’ began, and now yours will, too.

      Gut health is mainlining its way into public consciousness and there are lots of cool brands and products coming out which claim to help. And while some definitely do, as the category and interest grows, the cowboys start to ride into town peddling detoxes and tummy teas. Couple this with the science being pretty new (and at times conflicting) it makes for a difficult world to navigate, so KNOWLEDGE is POWER.

      We’ve grown an expert team of scientists, dietitians, nutritionists and doctors to keep us all on the right side of the tracks – a lot of whom you’ll meet in these pages. Unfortunately, there isn’t (and probably never will be) a magic bullet for good gut health, mainly because it’s so personalised. But we’re here to arm you with the FACTS, so you can make decisions that are right for you, and *disclaimer*, it’s not elitist, inaccessible or expensive.

      Whether you’re here because you’re struggling with digestive issues, you’ve heard lots of chatter about ‘the gut’ recently and want to know what all the fuss is about or just for the polyphenLOLs (you’ll get that joke soon), welcome to the Gut Gang.

      why now?

      we’ve always had guts – so why are we all just talking about the gut now?

      There’s stuff we’ve known for a pretty long time, for example, that the gut is pretty clever and acts like our second brain, even communicating how we feel. (The gut and brain are actually working much more closely together than we thought – more on this later.) Aside from just how fascinating the gut is, with so many people encountering digestive issues, there’s a huge demand to know more. Even if you don’t have digestive problems, looking after your gut is still as important as looking after your heart and all your other bits and bobs. Here’s a rundown of some of the main reasons we’re all talking about our guts.

      Illustration

      Looking back to 1990 there were approximately twenty-four studies on the microbiota published that year; fast forward to 2019–2020 and there were over 9,000 studies in just one year, bringing it to a total of over 40,000 in thirty years – that’s a lot of research. *NOTE this includes all microbiota, ranging from the gut to

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