商品简介 A practical plan for strengthening the incredible antiviral defenses located in your gut and resolving symptoms—from a renowned gastroenterologist and the author of Gutbliss.
Multiple studies have now confirmed a dramatic link between the health of our microbiome—the trillions of bacteria that live in our digestive tract—and our likelihood of getting devastating viral illnesses like COVID-19. Low-fiber diets, limited exposure to nature, and overzealous use of pharmaceuticals have messed up our microbiome, making many of us more susceptible to viruses than we naturally should be. But the good news is that unlike our genes, our microbiome is constantly evolving, offering a pathway back to health for those who are suffering, and proven protection for those who want to stay well. In The Anti-Viral Gut, Dr. Robynne Chutkan explains this groundbreaking research and offers a prescriptive plan for anyone trying to avoid or recover from a viral illness to rehab their gut microbes and restore their health.
In this powerful road map to strengthening the gut-immune system, Chutkan gives practical advice for balancing both your internal and external environment by optimizing diet, exercise, sleep, and time outdoors to boost your host defenses and overall health. The Anti-Viral Gut includes:
a step-by-step nutrition plan, including recipes to improve your good gut bacteria and an explanation of which foods and preparation methods bring you the fastest results
protocols for replacing immune-suppressive, microbiome-disruptive medications with safer alternatives
guidelines for exercise, sleep hygiene, and stress reduction methods for working mindfulness, breathwork, and meditation into your daily routine
advice on maximizing the potent antiviral effects of nature
Complete with inspiring stories from Dr. Chutkan’s own patients who have battled COVID-19, The Anti-Viral Gut will empower readers to jump-start their journey toward healing. 由著名胃肠病学家和《Gutbliss》作者提出的一项实用计划,旨在加强肠道中令人难以置信的抗病毒防御并解决症状。
作者简介 Robynne Chutkan, M.D., is one of the most recognizable gastroenterologists working in America today. Dr. Chutkan has a B.S. from Yale and an M.D. from Columbia and is a faculty member at Georgetown University Hospital and the founder of the Digestive Center for Wellness. An avid runner, yogi, and squash player, she’s passionate about introducing more dirt, sweat, and vegetables into people’s lives.
精彩内容 Our gut microbes have been evolving with us for a long time-we can trace their origins to a common ancestor more than fifteen million years ago, but our formal understanding of these tiny creatures dates to the 1600s, when the Dutch scientist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek first looked at his own dental plaque under the microscope and saw "little living animalcules." A few centuries later, in the 1800s, the French chemist Louis Pasteur proposed his "germ theory" that certain diseases are caused by the invasion of the body by microorganisms and avoiding contact with them is the way to stay healthy. (It's hard to believe that prior to these groundbreaking findings, people thought foul odors or "evil spirits" were the cause of illness.)
This concept of avoiding germs like the plague has become foundational to modern Western medicine and is the driving force behind our efforts to find new and more effective ways to assault dangerous bugs, like the development of antibiotics and vaccines-discoveries that save countless lives every day. We've formulated medications like monoclonal antibodies that can help us combat viruses and illness if our bodies aren't strong enough to fight them naturally and instituted widespread precautions to keep ourselves protected from pathogens. And simple yet important innovations in sanitation and hygiene, like Florence Nightingale's introduction of handwashing into British Army hospitals during the Crimean War, combined with social distancing and quarantining, have also become effective ways of limiting infectious outbreaks.
But as we've decreased the amount of germs on our bodies and in our environment, something else has increased at an alarming rate-and that's our susceptibility to viruses. The increased risk of viral infection includes completely new ones like human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), as well as reemerging oldies like measles, and more transmissible and deadlier versions of some we were already familiar with, like coronavirus. And with COVID-19, we have seen how a global pandemic can impact our daily existence. This paradox of increased infection as we get rid of germs isn't really a paradox at all-it's confirmation of the critical role our microbes play in protecting us from viruses.
The Hidden World Inside You
Since the days of Leeuwenhoek and Pasteur, we've also made another incredibly important discovery: not all germs are bad! In fact, the trillions of microbes that call our body home are primarily helping rather than hindering us, with a specific purpose that's very much aligned with our own survival. Without these microscopic critters, your immune system wouldn't be able to protect you from infections or cancer; your heart, lungs, and liver wouldn't function properly; and you wouldn't be able to digest food, assimilate nutrients, or synthesize essential vitamins and growth factors that your body can't make on its own. Even your mental health would take a major hit because of the lack of neurotransmitters that microbes produce and the close and necessary interaction between bacteria in your gut and your brain health and development. Why is understanding the relationship we have with our microbes so important? Because these organisms are, in fact, intimately involved in every aspect of our health-and they're especially critical for protecting us from viruses. Viruses can't survive on their own. They rely on their host's cellular machinery to allow them to live, reproduce, and go on to infect other hosts-a process known as replication. How easily they're able to hijack that machinery is what determines your outcome when infected with a virus, and that is in turn dependent on the trillions of microbes that inhabit your body. To understand how it all works, let's take a closer look at this hidden world inside you.
Multiple Microbial Parts
The microbiome refers to all the organisms that live in or on your body-from your scalp to your toenails and everywhere in between, but mostly in your gut. This diverse universe includes bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa, helminths (worms, for those of us who have them), as well as all their genes. A staggering hundred trillion microbes that include thousands of different species inhabit your body-with more than a billion bacteria in just one drop of fluid in your colon alone. We are single individuals, but we're composed of multiple living, breathing, moving microbial parts.
To appreciate the role and function of your microbes, it's helpful to think of your body as a factory. Organs like your lungs, heart, and liver represent the machinery that keeps production moving: extracting oxygen, pumping blood, removing toxins, synthesizing hormones, and performing all of the other complicated tasks that keep us alive. Some of these tasks are automated, but most of the assembly lines require constant monitoring, maintenance, and adjustment. We house the machinery, but who operates it? How does a complex process like, for example, digestion, actually happen? How does the food get broken down into its basic constituents and carried across the gut lining into the bloodstream where it can be transported to cells that utilize it as an energy source? Who helps produce the substances your body requires but can't make on its own, like B complex vitamins B12, thiamine, and riboflavin, and vitamin K? How does your body distinguish between serious infection with a dangerous virus and colonization with a harmless one? How does your immune system know when to rally the troops to defend you, and when to ignore benign intruders that don't pose a threat? Your microbes are the ones carrying out all of these tasks-and more! They even turn your genes on and off, activating those you need and dismantling those you don't.
Like David Vetter, the famous "boy in the bubble" who had a disease that weakened his immune system, you'd have to live in a sterile and isolated environment with no contact with the outside world in order to survive without your multitude of microbes, and even that wouldn't be enough to keep you alive because of all the other necessary functions your microbes perform. Since you're their host and they rely on you for their survival, most of your microbes are very much invested in your well-being. If you die, they die, too, and when you prosper, so do they. It is the ultimate symbiotic relationship, and when it's healthy and well maintained, both you and your microbes thrive.
We can categorize your microscopic roommates into three main groups:
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