Are you getting stressed out over climate change? Feeling anxious every time you walk under an airport canopy, or every time your child appears for a competitive exam conducted by the NTA? Do you get panic attacks when it rains in your city, or when your daughter says she wants to study medicine? Does endemic institutional decay fill you with despair? Does idiotic enthusiasm for tyranny make you ill? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the above, then I have just the solution for you: reclaiming gut health.
As per the latest medical research, an unhealthy gut is the most important effect, and cause, of stress, anxiety and depression — regardless of whether or not there are objective external triggers that might make stress and anxiety a legitimate human response. The critical determinant of a healthy gut: the 1,000 species of ‘good’ bacteria you are supposed to host there. These little darlings produce the enzymes that help your body absorb the nutrients in your food. They destroy the bad bacteria in your gut. And they also reduce the risk of cancer, diabetes and sadomasochistic behaviours such as voting repeatedly for those who squeeze out your life blood and feed it to cronies.
Given these benefits, people all over the world — including ‘pure’ vegetarians — are gulping down millions of live organisms every day. Those who would never dream of adopting a puppy or kitten are adopting billion-strong colonies of fully-grown bacteria. Acquaintances who would constantly bemoan the degeneration of the nation are now in perpetual high spirits. Their secret: they underwent a gut reset programme.
Seeing their dramatic transformation, I also signed up for a gut reset programme with a celebrity gut microbiome specialist. It was a six-day course, and it didn’t come cheap. Full disclosure: I negotiated a 15% discount in exchange for writing a column raising awareness about gut health. But frankly, I would have written this anyway, given the public interest involved. Apart from immediate personal benefits, a healthy gut also improves air quality and combats climate change by reducing emissions of certain kinds of gases.
For the benefit of those who would like to try a gut reset without paying for a formal programme, here are the five key principles drawn from my experience:
1. Probiotic is the new antibiotic
I know that as Indians, we love antibiotics. We are so crazy about them we have them for breakfast with milk, eggs and honey. Our love for them has even rubbed off on germs (bad bacteria), which have begun to stick around in our bodies for the tasty antibiotics they know are sure to come their way. But no more of this. We live in a polarised society where everyone must pick a side — ‘pro’ or ‘anti’. You are a pro- from now on.
2. Know your CFUs (not to be confused with STFUs)
Each probiotic capsule has billions of CFUs (Colony-Forming Units) — the good guys who will start setting up homes, offices and enzyme-making factories as soon as they land in your gut. Are the CFUs in your pill alive or are half of them dead? Do any of them have freeloaders (germs) lurking around? You don’t want to pay good money to eat dead bacteria, or worse, bad bacteria. So make sure you get the right CFUs.
3. Don’t eat junk
Live for the animals in your tummy. Every time you pick something up at the supermarket, or read a restaurant menu, ask yourself: would Mr. Lactobacillus rhamnosus approve?
4. Consume fermented stuff
My favourite. Gut microbiomes love it when there is regular inflow of fermented foods because they create a billion-strong confluence of happy, healthy gut microbes. It’s like a bacteria visiting a foreign country and being welcomed by thousands of NRI bacteria — it builds a fantastic atmosphere of microbial bonhomie, which is why beer, the world’s top fermented drink, is so important. Me and my current best friend Lactobacillus acidophilus bond over beer every night, and so should you.
5. Join a gut health cult
This would give you the necessary motivation to start talking about gut health with everyone you meet—an absolute must if you want to spread the good bacteria around.
One major challenge people face is that you can’t see your gut bacteria or make Reels out of them. But you can’t see God either. And people do crazy things to please their gods. I’ve reset my gut. Now you reset yours. And then, one after another, convert all your friends.
The author of this satire, is Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu.
Published - August 22, 2024 12:53 pm IST
