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The 10 best books to help improve your gut health

What is gut health? Here are the books to read, from Dr Megan Rossi to Tim Spector, to help you set the facts – and your microbiome – straight.

Credit: Flynn Shore / Penguin

The scientific proof is now overwhelming: our gut health is crucial to our well-being. Not only does a healthy microbiome help with digestion and energy levels, it also helps stave off neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Not to mention its importance to our mental well-being; our gut health plays a huge role in our moods, behaviours, and decision-making.

Whether you’ve heard lots about this new area of body science, or you’re totally new to it, there’s a book to teach you about the many benefits of practising good gut health, and where to begin with microbiomes, fermentation, and more. Find a handful of them below.

The Mind-Gut Connection by Emeran Mayer (2018)

The subtitle of this book – How the Hidden Conversation Within Our Bodies Impacts Our Mood, Our Choices, and Our Overall Health – pretty much says it all; our gut health is not specific to one region, but has a huge impact on multiple aspects of physical health, and even our behaviours. Combining “cutting-edge neuroscience with the latest discoveries on the human microbiome”, The Mind Gut Connection is a practical guide to eating well, keeping good health, and even staving off the onset of neurological diseases.

As funny as it deeply informative – the Guardian called its author “utterly, charmingly obsessed with the gut, gut bacteria and poo” – Giulia Enders’ 2017 book Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Under-rated Organ is an entertaining but straightforward confrontation of a part of our health that, because of ignorance and a sizeable dose of embarrassment, has taken far too long to understand. If you’re looking to understand microbiomes with a macro slice of humour, Gut is the gut health book for you.

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