This is the 10% happier podcast.

I'm Dan Harris.

Hey everybody. How we doing?

As you probably know, your gut health is incredibly important for your overall health and specifically for your mental health.

You may have heard about the gut brain axis, a two-way communication system involving nerves, hormones, and immune signals.

The gut microbiome helps regulate neurotransmitters like serotonin and can influence inflammation,

which affects mood and cognition.

In short, a healthy gut can help support clearer thinking, better stress resilience,

and a more stable mood.

And yet, when it comes to addressing your gut

health, there is so much bullshit and snake oil out there, like a tidal wave of nonsense. So today

we've got one of the world's leading experts on gut health. She's not trying to sell any

supplements to you. She's just trying to give you some basic tools to have a healthier

gut so you can have a healthier brain. And she's not afraid, as you will hear, to take this

conversation into some supremely uncomfortable areas, including the importance of looking at your

poop. Dr. Robin Chutkan is a board-certified gastroenterologist and the author of four books,

Gut Bliss, The Microbiome Solution, the Bloat Cure, and the Antiviral Gut.

She's also the host of the Gut Bliss podcast.

In this conversation, we talk about the relationship between gut health and mental health,

the microbiome, what it is,

why it's so important, and how you can view it through a Buddhist lens. She gives us a crash course

on the digestive system 101. She talks about how to navigate all the snake oil out there and why some

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