#17 Why hot girls should go with their gut instinct
Digesting what we've been sold about probiotic-this and fermented-that—and if it's at the expense of the key ingredients to your microbiome living its best life...
Question: what is invisible to the eye, with a population of a hundred trillion, and fuels a $55.7 billion (£44.68 billion) global business? Answer: our gut. It’s still somewhat of a riddle to me how the rather unsexy area of digestive health has multiplied in importance to become one of the greatest wellness obsessions of the past decade. But such is the fascination with the microbiome that we now have the phenomenon known as #guttok, while Google searches have soared by 2,900% over the last five years, and articles on the ‘gut-brain axis’ are published in the nationals almost every week.
Part of my curiosity is that—in a wellness scene preoccupied with physical ‘improvement’, like ab definition and snatched jawlines—gut health has, traditionally speaking, been more about how you feel than look. Indeed, the recent ‘Hot Girls Have IBS’ movement on TikTok seems indicative of an era in which we’re keener to get real about the uncomfortable realities of tummy troubles. Yet, a well-nourished microbiome is most definitely a worthwhile focus, with science linking it to improved immunity, digestion, mood and longevity. However, amidst a digestive health industry hungry to cash in and with the growth of social media misinformation, it seems we’re losing sight of the core fundamentals about what’s really best for our bodies.