What Your Gut Is Trying to Tell You
- Guest
- Giulia Enders
- Read time
- ~5 min
- Uploaded
- 23 Jun 2026
- Duration
- 0:54:43
- Views
- 59.4K
KEYPOINTS
- 01
The gut is robust, not fragile: many 'sensitivities' reflect an underlying injury, not a permanent inability to handle foods.
Dr. Giulia Enders says the biggest myth is that the gut is 'too stupid' to cope. When the lining is damaged, fructose, gluten or dairy all seem to cause trouble, and people with IBS often cut them out for good. Her view: you're not imagining the reaction, but the fix is healing the underlying issue first, after which many foods can slowly return.
- 02
Start by eating more of the healthy foods you already like, and increase fibre slowly.
In clinic she saw patients forcing down hated kale. Better to find the one or two vegetables you enjoy — asparagus, an extra onion in a ready-made sauce — and have more of them. A sudden fibre surge makes you gassy and bloated, like dumping fertiliser on a forest. A craving for a vegetable may even mean you already host microbes that eat it.
- 03
Two kinds of fibre do different jobs: insoluble fibre adds bulk; soluble fibre feeds microbes.
Cereal and apple skin contain tough insoluble fibre that microbes can't easily break down; its bulk 'knocks on the walls' of the gut, which pushes back and keeps you regular. Apple flesh, asparagus and cooled starches carry soluble, prebiotic fibre. Which foods suit you is individual — beans are wonderful for some microbiomes and leave others horribly bloated.
- 04
Cooking, cooling and reheating starches raises resistant starch and blunts blood-sugar spikes.
Cooled rice, pasta and potatoes recrystallise their starch, so it takes more time and enzymes to digest, giving a slower rise and fall in glucose and less rebound hunger. It's a case where preparation, not just calorie count, changes metabolic impact. Green bananas work similarly, and some countries use them for diarrhoea because they feed protective microbes.
- 05
The gut is the immune system's 'boot camp of tolerance', and a damaged lining can teach it to fear harmless foods.
Huge amounts of material cross the gut wall, so immune cells patrol it and learn that, say, peanut is fine because local cells stay healthy. If the lining is wounded, stressed or short on mucus, those cells may conclude peanut is a threat — one route to sensitivities and allergies.
- 06
Fibre lowers colon-cancer risk through microbes, faster transit and steadier blood sugar.
Waste that moves quickly spends less time releasing potential toxins against gut cells; fibre shapes the microbiome; and fewer glucose spikes mean less pro-inflammatory, more aggressive immune behaviour. Enders notes hereditary colon cancers exist, but the microbiome is now a leading indicator in others.
- 07
Sugar nudges the immune system toward aggression because it suddenly has spare energy.
Immune cells lean toward 'more safety guards' but historically lacked the energy budget. Abundant sugar lets them over-inflame. People drinking sugary soft drinks for 10–20 years show significantly elevated inflammatory-disease risk, though pollution and genetics also matter. She's unconvinced by swapping sugar for dates — 'the same molecule… don't kid yourself.'
- 08
Your stool is a free daily text message from your body.
Stool that sinks immediately with no air bubbles suggests bacteria haven't done their job; visible fat suggests poor fat digestion. Black, blood-red or grey stool is a warning sign. Use the Bristol stool scale for consistency — goat-like pellets mean too long in the gut — and don't overlook chronically soft stool, which can signal an impaired mucus layer.
- 09
Antibiotics can permanently erase microbes, especially in children and older adults.
Kids and seniors recover their microbiome worst; for adults it's roughly 50/50, with some never regaining lost 'family heirloom' strains. Probiotics help with antibiotic-associated diarrhoea and can lower pH, but may also occupy the niche of your own microbes and then leave. Prebiotic food feeds the microbes that will actually stay. She links US overuse to widespread gut problems.
- 10
Chronic stress is a hygiene problem for the gut.
On camera, a stressed person's gut walls turn pale as blood is diverted to brain and muscles. Short stress is like exercise, but weeks of it starve the gut of energy for protective mucus, make immune cells more aggressive and select for microbes that thrive on stress hormones. Hence nervous diarrhoea, new food sensitivities — and her line that stress hygiene matters more than sanitiser.
EXAMPLES
- 01
Pacific Island rice cookers and weight gain.
After rice cookers arrived, rice stayed warm instead of being cooked, cooled and reheated. One hypothesis for the weight gain was faster-digesting starch; when people cooled their rice again, they lost weight.
- 02
Squatting angle and the Sikirov study.
Sitting upright keeps a muscle-made kink in the rectum. Raising the legs about 30° straightens it, needs less pressure and may reduce haemorrhoids and diverticulosis, which are rarer in squatting cultures. Researcher Dov Sikirov found people emptied more easily that way; fans now use hotel bins as footstools.
- 03
Her teenage skin disease and the zinc overdose.
Recurring open wounds called 'eczema' came back after steroids, so she read up, linked skin to gut and probiotics, and self-experimented until it improved. She overdosed on zinc and felt she could smell things further away — something she wouldn't recommend now.
- 04
Coffee: the polyphenols are fine; the caffeine harms sleep.
Studies consistently show poorer sleep quality even in people who fall asleep easily, feeding a cycle of morning coffee. Her suggestion: drink it by early afternoon or switch to decaf for a few days and honestly check whether sleep improves.
- 05
Three additives she checks for on labels.
Methylcellulose, polysorbate 80 and carrageenan. She's found 'healthy' fibre products that are 40% sugar and juices with more sugar than Coca-Cola. Her sugar anchor is the WHO's 25 g a day, and an 80/20 split of real food to processed is fine.
- 06
Hospital food as medicine.
Shane describes a restaurateur friend removing ultra-processed food from hospitals to discharge patients a day or two earlier. Enders agrees: there's already research on food and wound healing, even psychiatric illness — systems should adjust to humans, not the reverse.
OTHER RELEVANT
- 01
Aim for about 30 different plants a week.
Tim Spector's rule of thumb: variety feeds a wider range of microbes. Pair it with the one-change advice — cool your starches and eat a liked vegetable more often. Microbiome shifts appear within 3 days to 3 weeks; cholesterol and immune changes take longer.
- 02
See a doctor for red flags rather than self-treating.
Severe unfamiliar pain, black or bloody stool, weight loss, night sweats, diarrhoea lasting more than 3–4 days, or sudden new constipation. For long-standing constipation, try fibre, probiotics and soaked flax or chia seeds with extra water.
- 03
Treat supplements, cleanses and meal timing as experiments, not rules.
Healthy adults rarely benefit from supplements, and high-dose vitamin E raised lung-cancer risk in smokers; sleep, food, stress, movement and joy are 80% of health. Cleanses carry some risk but may help as an occasional reset. Meal spacing or an evening cut-off can help visceral fat for some; experiment.
- 04
Take a gentle walk after meals and use breathing breaks.
Working muscles pull in blood sugar, but a stressful, heart-pounding walk backfires. She describes 'email apnea' — holding your breath at each notification — and suggests a one-minute breathing reset at noon and 4pm.