How to Repair and Nourish Your Gut | Dr. Giulia Enders

**Shane Parrish** (0:00)
What can unlocking a healthy gut do for your life?

**Giulia Enders** (0:03)
It can re-center one of the most important organs we have.
And really with that have all these second and third hand effects that you wouldn't even maybe have thought of. All these influences on your mental health, on just your sleep quality, on your metabolism, on your weight, on how you just feel emotionally during a day. It's sometimes more potent than genetics. And why would you not want to get into something that is so easy to influence and change, and then has such a wide reach on every aspect of your health?

**Shane Parrish** (0:37)
What's the biggest myth about the gut that you wish would disappear?

**Giulia Enders** (0:40)
I think a lot of people are afraid that it's like too fragile, too sensitive, too stupid to handle things.
And the gut is a very robust organ. If you treat it right and understand it most of the time, it can take a lot actually. And so sometimes when people think they have all kinds of sensitivities, some people do, and then for other people, it's more something that damaged the gut. So now when all these foods come into contact, fructose, gluten, dairy, and so on and so on, the gut always has an issue, but that's more because it has an underlying general issue that you have to first take care of. And then when it's all healed up and doing well again, you probably are able to eat all these foods again. But people then stop entirely, especially with IBS, for example, and they say, I can't have all of these things. And I would say, you're right, you're not imagining this, you really can't at the moment. But it's not because your stupid gut can't take it, but because there's something underlying that we need to fix first, and then slowly and surely you'll be able to have all these things again. Sometimes people have a little bit of a wrong view of what their body is actually still capable of and what medicine and things from the outside can do to it.

**Shane Parrish** (1:51)
What are the most common signs that the gut is not healthy?

**Giulia Enders** (1:55)
Very simple things are just the basics. Do you have a bellyache? How is digestion? Your body basically sends you a text every morning to go to the bathroom. Check it out. It's free.
Just turn around and look. Then also some other things are also a bit more subtle. When you look at the effect of an unhealthy gut on symptoms like anxiety, risk of depression, just an immune system that's out of check, may be influenced by some disturbances in the gut has an impact.

**Shane Parrish** (2:23)
If someone wanted to improve their gut health, what should they eat more of?

**Giulia Enders** (2:27)
I would say eat more of things that you really like, but that are luckily also healthy. That's always the first step. Because what I see oftentimes in clinic was that people would eat these things because they heard they were healthy, but they hated them and then they would just stuff their face with a stupid kale that, you know. And then always I said, oh, no, that's not good. Let look at like all these vegetable and fruit there. Which ones of those do you like? Casselby one or two that you like. And it's often way easier to go from there and then starting having just a bit more of that healthy stuff. Some people really like asparagus. Others will not mind having an onion more, you know, putting it in your sauce when you have like some ready-made sauce. Like just things you don't mind or that you really like the taste of and then have a little bit more of them. And I think that's always the starting point. Because drastically changing the diet, also putting way more fiber in all of a sudden, will just make you gassy or bloated because your gut is not used to that. And your microbes suddenly get all these foods. Like a forest and then you just dump some fertilizer on it. What's that going to do? You know, slowly change your diet, but with the things you like and the microbes like. That's a good compromise.

**Shane Parrish** (3:41)
Are there better foods for gut health? Like what would those be? Like what are the best foods for gut health?

**Giulia Enders** (3:46)
It is individual for some people because gut microbes are individual. Some people might have gut microbes that when they eat beans, it's wonderful. They got all their fiber, they do all the nice things. Some other people have gut microbes where they are horribly bloated when they eat beans. And this relies on your gut microbes. So I would say, look at the different vegetables and fruit.