Gut

The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ

Giulia Enders

• Publisher: Greystone Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781771641500
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Human Anatomy & Physiology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Our gut is almost as important to us as our brain and yet we know very little about how it works. Gut: The Inside Story is an entertaining, informative tour of the digestive system from the moment we raise a tasty morsel to our lips until the moment our body surrenders the remnants to the toilet bowl. No topic is too lowly for the author’s wonder and admiration, from the careful choreography of breaking wind to the precise internal communication required for a cleansing vomit. Along the way, the author provides practical advice such as the best ways to sit on the toilet to have a comfortable bowel movement, how clean your kitchen should be for optimum gut health, and how different laxatives work. She tells stories of gut bacteria that can lead to obesity, autoimmune diseases, or even suicide, and she discusses the benefits of dietary supplements such as probiotics. This book is a fascinating primer for anyone interested in how our ideas about the gut are changing in the light of cutting-edge scientific research. In the words of the author, “We live in an era in which we are just beginning to understand just how complex the connections are between us, our food, our pets and the microscopic world in, on, and around us. We are gradually decoding processes that we used to believe were part of our inescapable destiny.”

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Part One - Gut Feeling
• How Does Pooping Work? And Why That's an Important Question
• The Gateway to the Gut
• The Structure of the Gut
• What We Really Eat
• Allergies and Intolerances
• A Few Facts About Feces
• Part Two - The Nervous System of the Gut
• How Our Organs Transport Food
• Reflux
• Vomiting
• Constipation
• The Brain and the Gut
• Part Three - The World of Microbes
• I Am an Ecosystem
• The Immune System and Our Bacteria
• The Development of the Gut Flora
• The Adult Gut Population
• The Role of the Gut Flora
• The Bad Guys—Harmful Bacteria and Parasites
• Of Cleanliness and Good Bacteria
• Acknowledgments
• References
• About the Author
• Blank Page