Half of your social circle suddenly obsessed with their intestinal health? You are probably not alone.
From “The Good Gut” of 2015 by Erica and Justin Sonnenburg to the Netflix documentary in 2024 “Hack Your Health”, many documentaries, books and articles in the last decade – including by Business Insider – explored the potential advantages of the care of the intestine. Between December 2021 and April 2022, Google is looking for “intestinal health”, data from the search engine displayed and continued to increase since.
In turn, the global digestive health market – which encompasses functional food and food supplements, Probiotic “cleaning” yogurt of juice – should be worth $ 71.95 billion in 2027, compared to $ 37.93 billion in 2019, according to market studies by Fortune Business Reports.
But the increase in interest does not seem be because Much more people have intestinal problems than during the previous decades, Dr. Kyle Staller, gastroenterologist and director of the Gastrointestinal motility laboratory of Massachusetts General Hospital, told Bi.
← Deletion of sentence in parentheses and added line break And our diets have not changed sufficiently in recent years to have worsened intestinal health on the population level, he said.
Instead, health experts told BI that BUZZ comes down to a combination of growing research suggesting that intestinal health plays a more important role in our overall health than we thought before, the rise of influencers of well-being and a post-pandemic obsession for preventive health.
The link between the intestinal microbiome and our general health is clearer than ever
The thousands of microorganisms in our digestive system, known as the intestinal microbiome, are at the center of this craze for health. The first research suggests that a healthy intestinal microbiome is the one that contains a diversified fan of microbes, fueled by things such as fiber and fermented foods, and is linked to many physical and mental health benefits.
This research was advanced with the launch of the human microbiome project at the National Institutes of Health in 2007, and influential health health laboratories have since been created in institutions such as the University of Stanford and King’s College London.
And there has been an increase of 4,300% of the number of academic articles mentioning the terms “intestinal health” or the “intestinal microbiome” in the last decade – from three articles in 2014 to 132 articles in 2024 – according to data from the Elsevier Scopus Research Database.
This explosion of research coincided with the rise of social media and the erosion of certain taboos, in particular by speaking of gastrointestinal problems, said Staller, especially for women.
Certain brands of supplements now claim that their products help intestinal health. Elena Noviello / Getty Images
With greater social conscience, comes greater misunderstanding
People who are frank on their digestive problems on social networks have made us more aware of the role of the intestine in our health and well-being, Stephanie Alice Baker, sociologist at City St George’s, University of London, who does research on the disinformation of online health and the culture of well-being, told Bi.
And while fashionable diets fall out of fashion, intestinal health has become a socially acceptable replacement, she said.
The idea of wanting to lose weight is more taboo now than it was 15 years ago, said Baker. “Now people still want to be thin, but they often supervise this objective through the objective of health or self-optimization,” she said, because it is more socially acceptable.
And when a health trend becomes aware online, an influx of companies, products and services will always appear in response, she added.
But Staller said That research is still new, and we understand much less than people think. He warns against jumping on conclusions based on one or two scientific studies or anecdotal evidence shared online. Do not think that the products sold as “natural” are automatically beneficial, he added.
“People seem to think that one or another way, we could be able to hack our guts and cultivate the ideal microbiome,” said Staller, with probiotics or fermented foods. But we do not know how to create the “ideal microbiome” because we do not yet know what it looks like, he said.
Although there is no “magic thing” or a miracle product for good intestinal health, Staller has recommended to focus on generally healthy habits: sleeping enough, eating a nutritive diet, including enough fiber and be active.
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