“Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut” – A Review

New Netflix Documentary Offers a Path for Those Suffering from Chronic Disease

By David Murphy,

Story at a glance:

• A new Netflix documentary focuses on gut health and the emerging science behind the human microbiome.

• Millions of Americans suffering from a significant chronic health epidemic are searching for answers.

• Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut interviews top scientists from around the world and follows four individuals as they track their gut microbiome health and eating habits to showcase a positive road to recovery.

• Alarming statistics related to gut health show major problems with the U.S. food supply.

• Best Sites, Books, and Recent Studies for those searching for answers.

If you’ve ever had a sugar rush from eating candy bars or a brain freeze from drinking a milkshake too fast, you know that eating certain foods can almost immediately impact your health or state of being. For most people with today’s food supply, an adverse reaction is a more common experience than it has ever been in our species’ history.

Fortunately, people are starting to ask serious questions about the growing chronic disease epidemic in America, and the scientific and medical community is beginning to take notice.

All too often in America, the food industry promotes the illusion of health with its products. In contrast, hundreds of millions of Americans and people around the world who eat a Standard Western Diet (SAD) of highly processed foods suffer from a growing list of chronic diseases and physical and mental ailments that often go untreated or even acknowledged by standard medical care.

Modern science is undergoing a scientific revolution in our understanding of how our gut microbiome contributes significantly to our health and chronic disease, which may help unwind the current chronic disease crisis we are facing.

Today, Americans, who allegedly have access to the “safest and most affordable food” on the planet, at least according to Big Food and our elected officials, are currently suffering from the most significant health crisis the world has ever known.

The statistics behind Our Nation’s Poor Health are staggering.

At the moment:

• 50% of American adults have at least 1 chronic disease, while

• another 40% of adults have 2 or more chronic diseases.

• 42% of American adults are obese, and,

• another 30.7 are considered overweight.

But don’t worry, it gets worse.

Today, an estimated 88% of American adults are considered “metabolically unhealthy,” according to researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. This means that only 12% of adults in the U.S. have a healthy metabolism.

The current chronic disease epidemic is so bad that 20% of U.S. school children are now obese, and 77% of American teenagers can’t even pass the basic physical exam to qualify to serve in our military.

The important question about our health is: What’s causing this sharp rise in chronic disease, and how do we resolve this level of harm to individual and collective health?

Netflix Documentary — Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut

Fortunately, a new Netflix documentary, Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut lays out a new understanding of how food and what we eat play a vital role in our health and can have serious negative impacts on the human microbiome. Modern science is just beginning to understand this importance.

This groundbreaking new documentary starts with a series of important questions, some of which you may have already asked yourself more than a few times:

• What is healthy?

• Why is eating painful?

• What do I need to get healthier?

• Why is it hard to lose weight?

• How do I not know what’s right?

The new scientific reality that Hack Your Health explores in one hour and 19 minutes is that “our gut affects our whole body, and it influences so much about our health.”

As Hippocrates famously said 24 centuries ago: “All disease begins in the gut.”

Modern science and the medical community are learning just how important “gut health” is.

In the past decade, scientists have found that 70% of our immune system lives in our gut, as trillions of microbes and bacteria evolve in a constant dance from the outside influences of what we eat, our levels of activity and exercise, and even our exposure to sunlight, nature, friends, and the community we live in.

At the same time, scientists are learning more about the importance of gut microbes in mental health, as more than 50% of dopamine and 90 to 95% of serotonin are produced in our guts.

Making the Hidden Story of Our Gut Microbiome Come Alive

Hack Your Health is directed by Anjali Nayar, an Indian/ Canadian writer and director. She uses her background as a former climate scientist, tech founder, and semi-pro soccer player to tell a dynamic story about the fascinating science and dedicated experts behind this groundbreaking emerging public health solution.

As tens of millions of Americans and people around the world continue to suffer from declining health and a rise in chronic diseases, Nayar interviews a team of scientific experts from Germany to California and tracks four different individuals experiencing their health and digestive problems from the Bay Area to Japan.

Rather than follow the traditional documentary format of hopping from scientific expert to scientific expert, in Hack Your Health, Nayar delves into the deep end of the human digestive system with a lighthearted and informative style that demystifies the role that gut health plays in our overall well-being and crafts a compelling narrative for her audience.

Hack Your Health Film’s Leading Test Subjects

As the film’s main subjects and pioneering microbiome guinea pigs, each of the below 4 individuals has a host of debilitating digestive symptoms as Nayar and her team of experts track their diets and lifestyles while taking stool samples and other diagnostic tests to help diagnose and ultimately correct their gut health issues.

Maya Okada Erickson, a Michelin-starred 27-year-old pastry chef from San Francisco, suffers from devastating and life-limiting stomach issues when she eats what she calls “fun foods” and is forced to subsist on a diet of “vegetables and dietary supplements.”

“If I eat pretty much anything that’s not vegetables, I start getting stomach pains — which makes my job incredibly difficult,” Maya shares with the audience.

As hard as it is to believe that someone in the professional baking industry can’t eat their own dishes without causing harm, Maya is encouraged to slowly expand the diversity of foods in her diet to increase her microbiome’s ability to digest problem foods properly.

Daniell Koepke, a young doctoral student studying clinical psychology, suffers from chronic gut pain and a host of digestive symptoms that range from irritable bowel syndrome to constipation and indigestion as she struggles to find relief.

“It’s really hard for me to remember what it was like to eat food before it became associated with anxiety and pain and discomfort,” Daniell tells the filmmaker.

For those with chronic digestive pain and health issues searching for answers, Daniell’s struggle is the most dramatic.

As Daniell recounts the pain and anxiety that comes with her eating every day, she resorts to trying to resolve her symptoms with “fecal microbiota transplantation,” which requires her to become a test subject and consumer her own brother’s and her boyfriend’s fecal matter in a desperate bid to return to normalcy.

While this may seem radical, the results from other patients have been promising for this emerging field. In the film, Daniell experiences symptoms from each of the different fecal donors, such hormonal acne when using her brother’s fecal matter and suffers from depression when trying her boyfriend’s poop, which she eats by placing it in a capsule form.

Kimmie Gilbert, a single mother of 3 children, struggles to lose weight and feed her kids healthier food. Like many Americans with a hectic schedule, Kimmie, an entrepreneur, would lose weight and then have a rebound effect where the weight comes back on and then some.

After years of yo-yo dieting, weight loss medication, and expensive gym memberships, Kimmie was relieved when her tests for gut diversity showed that her microbiome lacked the essential bacteria associated with losing weight and feeling full.

As a solution, Kimmie pledges to give up dieting and adopt long-term lifestyle changes that can help change the diversity of her gut microbiome over time.

Kobi Kobayashi, after two decades as one of the world’s reigning competitive eaters, can no longer experience hunger. While this may be the most dramatic symptom that one can imagine a professional competitive eater experiencing, Kobayashi’s poop tests told doctors that his microbiome was actually in good shape.

Diving further into his odd symptoms, brain scans revealed that there was something “abnormal” happening inside his brain when he ate. As a result, the world’s reigning competitive eater, who has been called the “godfather of competitive eating,” announced that he’s officially retiring from professional eating.

During his competitive eating career, Kobayashi stunned audiences as he won Nathan’s Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest 6 times, “eating 50 hotdogs in 12 minutes” in his rookie appearance on July 4, 2001. Currently, Kobayashi holds 13 World Records in competitive eating, including bunless hot dogs, rice balls, grilled cheese sandwiches, buffalo wings, lobster rolls, cow brains, hamburgers, tacos, pizza, and more.

This level of food consumption is insane and not recommended for mere mortals. It’s hard to believe that Kobayashi’s microbiome has survived this decades-long assault on digestion, but unlike most Americans, Kobi often recovers from his extreme binge eating with a Japanese diet that may have helped cause less overall harm to his long-term health.

Gut Health and Digestive Issues Cause Major Lifestyle Impairments and Societal Costs

Image source: Human gut microbiota in health and disease: Unveiling the relationship, Frontiers in Microbiology, Volume 13 - 2022 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2022.999001

While most young Americans believe that we’re often indestructible, a combination of youthful foolishness, Hollywood bravado, and decades of media propaganda, the growing chronic health crisis is showing many of us are at our absolute limits as chronic disease becomes the norm and outright good health is now an outlier.

As Hippocrates and ancient doctors once knew, good health and immunity begin in the gut.

A quick anatomy lesson shows that what happens in our stomach and what goes in it matters more than we realize. At almost 30 feet long, the human gut can contain 800 to 900 folds, and the bacteria inside it weigh between 3.3 and 4.5 pounds, more than the human brain!

This may be why the ancients told us to “trust your gut.”

Modern science is now calling our “second brain” as researchers begin to understand the dynamic link between the gut-brain axis and our health, which plays such an important role in hunger and satiety, food preferences and cravings, food sensitivities and intolerances, digestion, metabolism, mood, behavior, cognitive function, and immunity among other essential basic bodily and mental functions.

According to research conducted by doctors at the Yale School of Medicine, the genes of bacteria in the human gut are 150 times larger than in the human genome, making the gut a giant mixing bowl of genetic and bacterial information that can impact our health.

Gut Health & Digestive Issues Impact Millions of Lives in U.S.

Today, tens of millions of Americans are impacted by harmful digestive symptoms and diseases that cause severe economic impacts and adverse health outcomes.

A 2022 survey by the American Gastroenterological Association found that an estimated 40% of Americans suffer from gut health issues and have even stopped routine activities such as exercising (19%), running errands (17%), and spending time with family and friends (16%) due to their digestive symptoms.

• In the U.S., every year, between 25 to 45 million are estimated to suffer from Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). Statistically, IBS is thought to affect 5 to 10% of people globally.

• According to the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, more than 60 million people are impacted by digestive illnesses each year, resulting in over 4.5 million hospitalizations and around 236,000 fatalities.

• Gut health issues cost Americans roughly $97.8 billion in direct medical costs and $44 billion in indirect costs.

• Chronic digestive illnesses affect 20 million Americans, with digestive problems accounting for 25% of all surgical procedures.

• Every year, the U.S. treats 14 million cases of acute digestive illnesses, including one-third of all cancers.

For those hoping to learn the origins of their digestive issues, you’re not alone.

Like tens of millions of Americans, I’ve also had serious gut health issues that led to me retiring in 2018 to try to recover. In 2014, after a case of serious food poisoning, I was diagnosed with IBS or Irritable Bowel Syndrome, a catch-all diagnosis that covered a range of debilitating symptoms.

Even after seeing a half dozen doctors, rounds of supplements, and following diet change recommendations, my symptoms worsened and by 2017 I was eventually diagnosed with SIBO or Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth, which is where normally healthy bacteria that live in your small intestine become overcrowded by unhealthy bacteria and can ultimately lead to autoimmune conditions and chronic illnesses that can be hard to overcome without serious interventions.

Ironically, I got the severe case of food poisoning the night before I was to speak at Monsanto’s Annual Shareholder Meeting in St. Louis in January 2014 where I was hoping to convince Monsanto’s executives to stop fighting GMO labeling and support transparency in America’s food system.

At the time, I was helping lead the food movement in exposing Monsanto’s corrupt practices such as bullying farmers who did not want to grow their crops, refusing the label their GMO products in our food, and ultimately their widespread contamination of our food supply with harmful glyphosate residues in our most consumer foods.

Key Gut Bacteria Mentioned in “Hack Your Health. The Secrets of Your Gut”

Understanding the roles of specific bacteria in your gut can help you appreciate the complexity and importance of your intestinal flora. Although the GI-Map stool test measures many more gut bacteria, here are 5 of the most critical bacteria in the gut:

1. Lactobacillus: helps digest lactose and other sugars, turning them into lactic acid. It supports digestive health and helps inhibit harmful bacteria.

2. Bifidobacterium: found in dairy products, Bifidobacterium boosts the immune system, limits the growth of harmful bacteria, and helps produce vitamins like B12, biotin, and K2.

3. Escherichia coli: while certain strains can be harmful, most are harmless and play a role in breaking down and producing essential nutrients and protecting the gut wall from dangerous pathogens.

4. Enterococcus faecium: are essential for processing waste products and toxins, aiding overall digestive health.

5. Akkermansia muciniphila helps maintain the mucus layer of the gut, protects against intestinal pathogens, and regulates metabolism and body weight.

In the last decade, scientists have delved deeper into our understanding of the importance of these gut bacteria in our everyday lives, and the results have been revolutionary.

Key Health Impacts from Human Microbiome

As science unravels the impacts the gut microbiome plays on our health, here are a few of the significant areas where the quality of your microbiome can impact your health:

1. Metabolic Disorders such as obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, and Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD).

2. Cardiovascular Diseases such as hypertension and Atherosclerosis or plaque formation in arteries.

3. Gastrointestinal Disorders such as Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) (Crohn’s disease, Ulcerative colitis), Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), and colorectal cancer.

4. Neurological and Mental Health Conditions such as depression and anxiety, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s disease.

5. Autoimmune and Immune-Related Diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis (MS), asthma, and common allergies linked to immune system development and allergy susceptibility based on early-life microbiome composition impacts.

6. Risks of Certain Cancers such as breast cancer and lung and pancreatic cancers as the microbiome can influence estrogen metabolism and also contribute to systemic inflammation and tumorigenesis.

7. Infectious Diseases, such as Clostridium difficile Infections (C. diff) and even COVID-19 severity as gut microbiome composition, can significantly impact immune response and disease outcomes.

8. Aging and Longevity factors can be determined by the diversity and stability of the gut microbiome and how it impacts healthy aging or how imbalances can contribute to frailty and age-related diseases.

No matter where you are on your health journey, watching Hack Your Health on Netflix will ultimately be a great education and use of your time. Today, scientists are just beginning to understand the dynamic connection between what we eat and how it impacts our gut microbiome and ultimately our health over time.

Please do yourself a favor and pause your regular viewing Netflix binging schedule and add this documentary to your weekend lineup, it just might save your life and help someone who know down the line.

More Information: The Best Books, Sites, & Experts to Follow

1. The Good Gut: Taking Control of Your Weight, Your Mood, and Your Long-Term Health, by Justin Sonnenburg and Erica Sonnenburg, PhDs, Stanford University

For more information about the Sonnenburg’s groundbreaking work: The Sonnenburg Lab.

2. Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics is Fueling Our Modern Plagues, by Martin J. Blaser, MD., renowned microbiologist

3. Super Gut: A 4-Week Plan to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health, and Lose Weight, By William Davis, MD, famous gut health doctor and author of Wheat Belly and Undoctored.

For more information about his protocols visit Dr. Davis Infinite Health.

4. Gut Check: Unleash the Power of Your Microbiome to Reverse Disease and Transform Your Mental, Physical, and Emotional Health, By Steven R. Gundry, MD, the author of the New York Times bestselling book Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in “Healthy” Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain.

For more information about his work, GundryMd.com.

5. A Gutsy Girl’s Bible: A 21-Day Approach to Healing the Gut, by Sarah Kay Hoffman offers a solid roadmap for those suffering from digestive issues like IBS, SIBO, SIFO and more.

For more information about Sarah’s journey visit A Gutsy Girl: Get great gut health updates for anyone who suffers from IBS, SIBO, or a whole host of autoimmune diseases from Sarah Kay Hoffman.