From the Department of Hey, who knew we’d be talking about poop so much today? Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut, a slab of quasi-documentary Netflix content that takes root in our guts and emerges with compelling science about our relationship with food. Or, more accurately, it takes root in the intestines of four people with various health problems that could be managed with a greater understanding of the microbiomes within their bodies. It also features a serious doctor who uses the word “butthole” more than once, so not only are we being informed, but our inner eight-year-old might be entertained as well.
The bottom line: If there’s a “celebrity gut doctor,” it’s probably Giulia Enders. She’s the face of this documentary, a German scientist who has studied and written extensively about the gut, and she’s also the aforementioned user of the word “butthole,” which sounds a little funnier due to her accent. The use of that word helps set the tone for The Secrets of Your Gut, which is not immune to the inherent and undeniable comedy of bathroom humor. In fact, one of the gut scientists featured in this film coins the phrase “repoopular” while talking about a very new treatment for gut bacteria called “fecal microbiome transplantation.” Still, puns on manure and the like aren’t necessarily incongruent with the seriousness of the film’s main themes, four people struggling with some gut-related health issues close and familiar (and one that isn’t at all relatable, but nevertheless fascinating from an objective perspective).
And so we have Maya, a Michelin-starred pastry chef who has battled anorexia and feels bad if she eats anything other than vegetables and supplements, which means she can’t even eat her own delicious concoctions, like this crazy cake tower covered of macaroni. Daniell is a psychology student whose terrible dietary choices now find her dealing with a series of digestive problems; Now, she can only eat about 15 different foods that don’t cause her pain. Kimmie’s situation will sound familiar to many: she has been labeled morbidly obese and she cannot lose weight despite trying a variety of diets, exercise regimens and medications. And then there’s the guy you’ve probably heard of, Kobayashi, the world-renowned competitive eater who has devoured inhuman amounts of hot dogs and pizza slices, etc., and now, perhaps to no one’s surprise, no longer experiences feelings. starving and worries that his particularly tight career has damaged his body.
Some answers, according to Enders and the other experts in this paper, could be found in the microbiome, the community of bacteria that lives inside the human body. Like fingerprints, each of our microbiomes is different. Additionally, to no one’s surprise, the microbiomes of people living in an industrialized society lack the diversity of bacteria we need to be healthy, which is a result of consuming processed foods. So doctors asked Maya, Daniell, Kimmie and Kobayashi to send them fecal samples so their microbiomes could be analyzed and paired with foods that would help them grow a wider variety of gut bacteria and therefore feel better. .
What movies will it remind you of?: The Secrets of Your Gut is similar to the not-quite-documentary movies and series that accumulate on Netflix, for example, Live to 100, The Mind: Explained or Get Smart With Money.
Performance worth watching: In particular, Kobayashi shows little shame in eating insane amounts of hot dogs in front of international audiences and thus apparently has no problem with a documentary crew following him into the bathroom to collect a sample of dookie with a tiny spoon. (Note that the film spares us the graphic details of this scene).
Memorable dialogues: Microbial ecologist Jack Gilbert reflects on how new the study of microbiomes is: “At the beginning of microbiome science, we were really our own guinea pigs. My colleagues and I collected our own poop and put it in freezers “.
Sex and skin: All this talk of what comes out of butts, and not a single shot of a butt.
Our Take: Secrets of Your Gut doesn’t sound like pseudoscience, which is always the concern with things like this. Although it does not delve into the tedious details of scientific studies, it also avoids giving us simple and easy answers to complex questions. At times it feels like a movie your 6th grade science teacher would screw on the projector so you can dive in and smoke a cigarette: lots of infotainment-style tidbits, and the kitschy stop-motion animation (remembering, of all things , to the Trolls movies) allows director Anjali Nayar to replace real poop logs with bug-eyed puppets so no one gets too grossed out here.
One of the key points emerges in a sequence illustrating how the body chemistry of the film’s four main characters reacts differently to eating the same apple: There may not be a one-size-fits-all answer to all gut health concerns. It all comes down to our individual microbiomes, which can be analyzed (please pronounce this ANAL-eyezed, so I can join in the pun fun) for their deficiencies, for example, Kimmie, which lacks the bacteria that make it feel full, so you can now use this information to determine which foods will help you diversify your microbiome and develop a beneficial diet for your unique situation.
Therefore, each of the four subjects has a different potential solution to its problems. One fascinating revelation is that our gut has a “second brain” that communicates feelings of hunger or fullness to the brain in our skull, leading scientists to conclude that the gut may be linked to a variety of health problems. Check out this anecdote: Daniell decides to try a fecal microbiome transplant, which requires, I’m not making this up, essentially consuming someone else’s poop. Don’t worry, it’s not as gross as it seems. We see her boyfriend take one of the dookies out of her fridge and drop it into a blender so it can be injected into capsules for easy supplementation. He suffers from depression, and when she takes those pills, he suffers from depression. She tried the same thing with her brother’s outings and ended up with the same problems with acne breakouts. This is completely fascinating bullshit science!
Oh, and one thing I feel compelled to mention: scientists have a recommendation that every human being should follow: eat more plants. Fiber is GREAT for your gut. As my dad used to tell me, “Fonzie tells her to eat her vegetables.” And, of course, what The Fonz says comes true.
