Hello and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health.

Today we're diving into one of our favorite topics, gut health.

Research continues to confirm just how important the gut is for overall health.

From energy to immunity and even mood, it all seems to

start with the gut. It's no surprise then that the hunt for the next gut-boosting hack has exploded

in recent years. So, are probiotic's really the answer? Or is the fix already sitting on our

supermarket shelf? In this episode, Dr. Karan Rajan helps us separate science from

marketing hype and shares the simple evidence-back changes that can make a big difference to your gut.

When we talk about the gut, we're not just referring to the stomach, are we? No, and in fact, if you're thinking about the gut, you think about digestion.

And if you think about digestion, it would also be wrong to think about the stomach,

because no digestion actually really takes place in the stomach.

There's some mechanical and maybe some chemical digestion.

It also happens in the mouth.

But actually, digestion begins in the brain. So when

you're even thinking about an ice cream, a plate of food, the brain actually triggers that whole

cascade of digestion. You know, the signals get sent to the gut, to the salivary glands in your

head, and all these juices are, you know, beginning to,

you know, starting to be secreted. And that's all linked with also your circadian rhythm,

that biological clock. You see, I like to think of the gut as this orchestra. And that orchestra,

the maestro of that orchestra, is the brain, the circadian rhythm, because it determines when you feel hungry, when you want to go to the toilet.

So it really all starts in the brain.

And then the bulk of the digestion, the kind of real mechanical digestion and the chemical stuff that we think about,

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