You're listening to Well Now, Slight's podcast on Health and Wellness.

I'm Kavita Patel.

And I'm Maya Feller.

The topic of gut health continues to trend across

social media and on grocery store shelves. I mean with good reason, so our gut

has a very real and significant impact on our whole body health.

Research about the gut microbiome has exploded over the past decade,

and hundreds of supplements and tinctures and powders can be purchased

with this promise of quote-unquote enhancing its

bacterial composition and overall health. So I called my colleague Dr Valerie Anton

Gustav who is a gastroenterologist because I wanted to ask her how she

thinks about and defines the gut microbiome and this is what she said to me Kavita.

She said it's a collection of bacteria and sometimes fungi that live in the human digestive system.

Each individual has their own immune system and their own microbiome.

And there are a lot of different functions that include helping with

digestion, the immune system, and protection.

And we just don't know enough about it.

So, Kavita, how does gut health come into play

with your work as an internist?

I mean, I would just say the short answer is that it doesn't we don't have

enough time to probably probe the way I think either specialists or potentially dieticians

or others can into it so So we often say, like for example, that especially dealing

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