DY4YK7 Abdominal pain Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
German medic Giulia Enders is on a mission to explain “why the gut is so fascinating”. This amusing and delightfully frank primer on our intestines, translated by David Shaw, is crammed with amazing biological facts (“the surface area of our digestive system is about a hundred times greater than the area of our skin”) and anecdotes from the scatological fringes of research: to discover the best position in which to poo, Japanese scientists fed volunteers luminescent substances then x-rayed them as they did their business. (Squatting, not sitting on the loo, is the easiest on the intestinal tract.) From the causes of food allergies, the “gut gymnastics” of digestion and the links between the gut and the subconscious (“an unhappy gut can be the cause of an unhappy mind”), to its astonishing population of micro-organisms, the microbiome, which can weigh up to 2kg, Enders shows that far from being ashamed of it we should celebrate our gut. She observes that the movements involved in burping or breaking wind “are as delicate and complex as those of a ballerina”. Her enthusiasm is contagious and will change your view of your intestines: “The more you know about the gut, the more beautiful it appears.”
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