"A varied diet of digestive writings, from scientific explanations of the digestive system, gut-friendly diet guides, recipes, and many, many poo stories"
Readers with potty humour will appreciate Mikhail lightening the academic tone throughout with scatalogical puns and conversational translations of academic language (e.g. chapters on ‘bumfluenza’ and ‘bum-dumplings’).
Mikhail does make multiple comments throughout about the difficulty of ascribing general advice when gut issues are individual and context-dependent, but my sense is that it’s likely that this book would be more helpful for someone who already has a sense of a specific gut-issue that they’re experiencing. As a more general, curious reader, I did find myself finding the advice sometimes seeming contradictory, like which foods are recommended to increase or avoid – if the same symptoms are from different gut-issues, the guidance completely changes. I think it could help readers to have more help navigating these seeming contradictions, for example, Mikhail using her expertise to make a flow-chart of symptoms to look out for to diagnose your more likely issues, and therefore follow-through on which of the different dietary plans to try.
I enjoyed some of the unexpected interesting facts scattered across the book, like tips on how to know if kombucha is good quality (look for strands floating in it, to know it’s not artificial, and it must be refrigerated, as the low temperature is what keeps the yeast and bacteria alive).
