As a result of talking to functional medical practitioners like Dr. Tamsin Lewis in the UK, Dr. Christine Rosche in the US, we’ve realised that its important to adopt a lot of those functional medical principles, which is that health starts in the gut.

You might also treat the local site, but first of all, you look at what’s going on in the gut. What’s going on with the diversity of bacteria you may or may not have, and the types and prevalence of bacteria that you may or may not have.

A little bit more about the gut first. When we talk about the gut, we’re referring to an area of the stomach. It contains a rich amount of bacteria. In fact, we have about a 100 trillion bacterial cells in the body, which makes us more microbial than it actually does human. If you were to take all those cells and weigh them, it comes to about three pounds, so it’s as heavy as a human brain. It’s really quite extraordinary. We also have our highest prevalence, between 50 and 90% of all our serotonin levels, are also in the gut, which goes some way to explaining why food might make us feel good, and why emotional eating can be such an issue. Maybe eating really does create hormones that make us feel good.

One of the reasons to start with the gut is because it’s now known that a lack of bacteria in the gut can cause things like autoimmune conditions, eczema, and other conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis. It can affect depression. It can affect heart disease and cancer, it’s believed. We’re starting to discover much more about the gut. It’s a real area of growing science.

If you don’t know much about the gut, I’d urge you to listen to these two podcasts. One is with Dr. Tamsin Lewis and the other is with Dr. Christine Rosche. If you’ve got questions, this is a vast topic, and I appreciate you might have, please send them to [email protected].

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Leanne Spencer is an entrepreneur, coach, TEDx Speaker, author of Remove the Guesswork, and founder of Bodyshot Performance Limited. Bodyshot is a health and fitness consultancy that helps busy professionals get more energy by removing the guesswork around their health, fitness and nutrition. Visit www.bodyshotperformance.com or email [email protected] to register your interest in our services and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Author(s)

  • Leanne is an award-winning entrepreneur and the founder of Bodyshot Performance Limited. She delivered a TEDx talk on 'Why fitness is more important than weight', is the author of bestselling books 'Remove the Guesswork' and 'Rise and Shine', and hosts a podcast called ’Remove the Guesswork‘. Leanne is the founder of Bodyshot Performance, an award-winning health and wellbeing company. Bodyshot Performance work with businesses of up to 500 people who want to create a culture of energy, vitality and performance through the business and position wellbeing as a competitive advantage. Bodyshot intersect the latest science and technology to provide unique solutions to the challenge of wellbeing in the workplace that have a direct impact on the bottom line. Our clients have won awards for wellbeing and recognise it directly improves employee engagement and retention and attracts talent into the business.  We also work with chronically stressed or burned out professionals to get you back in control of your health and able to do the things you want to do in life. My expertise is around health, fitness and wellbeing, specifically focusing on sleep, mental health, energy, body composition, digestion and fitness. I host a popular podcast on iTunes called ’Remove the Guesswork ‘, and in November 2016 I delivered a TEDx talk on 'Why fitness is more important than weight'. I’m the author of the bestselling books 'Remove the Guesswork' and 'Rise and Shine' and I regularly speak to corporates on health and wellbeing. My personal values are to live truthfully, considerately and to "suck all the marrow out of life" as Thoreau said. I support the charity Diversity Role Models which works to combat homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying. I recently completed the world’s toughest ski race to raise £10,125 for Alzheimer's Research as my father-in-law was profoundly ill with Alzheimers, and I am on a constant mission to find ways to live in a way that is sustainable and environmentally friendly. I love sport, fitness, reading, gardening, business, podcasting, and being with my cat and our scampish little rescue dog, Kami from Romania.