Thursday, March 19, 2015

The Good Gut


Taking Control of Your Weight, Your Mood, and Your Long-Term Health
I have spent 30+ years in the practice of internal medicine attempting different strategies to change behavior when bad habits happen to good people.  Too often, lifestyle epiphanies occur after major shake-ups such as the diagnoses of diabetes or other serious conditions.  I particularly like the ‘bibliotherapy’ approach, and I’m always on the lookout for good self-help book recommendations to add to my short list of those that truly effect change.

I am pleased to report here that “The Good Gut” is just such a book, well-written in a way that makes it one of those notable non-fiction works that you’ll read cover to cover, not losing interest or comprehension somewhere between a paragraph’s start and finish (no flipping ahead to see how much longer this chapter!).  The Drs. Sonnenburg do not tediously repeat and overstate the standard health caveats to avoid sugar, lose weight, and exercise, but rather expand on their primary point, namely the importance, care, and feeding of our fellow life bacterial travelers. 

As a regular reader of the latest medical literature, much of the content herein was not news to me.  The presentation, however, in everyday layperson language, was personally compelling in ways that the New England Journal of Medicine is not.  A recent search on the NEJM web-site for ‘gut microbiota’ returned 28 articles, not one of which with a title so compelling as to change my diet for life.  Oh right, I’ve already done that, changing out breakfast foods long before the Sonnenburgs’ book and the rest of menu as a result of this read.

I will be recommending this book to my patients, and I also commend it to you.  This book will be released 4/21/15.