"It Takes Guts" Documentary

"It Takes Guts" Documentary
Source: Amazon.com

"It Takes Guts" is a 53 minute 2016 documentary available on Amazon. It features the thoughts and appearances of nine or so field leaders on the topics of microbes, our gut, and our health with a special focus on obesity.

Some key take-aways are the impact of gut microbe diversity on leanness, how microbes communicate to each other and to our body, how fiber allows nutrition to reach microbes deeper in our digestive track, etc. When we eat, we eat for much more than just ourselves; our diverse microbe ecosystem also lives on what we ingest and sends signals that communicate with other parts of our body. These signals may even impact what we crave and how we behave. Other environmental factors also impact our gut microbiome including breastfeeding, antibiotic treatments, and more.

Professor Tim Spector has taken a special interest in researching various diet choices. His current gut-friendly diet includes cutting out processed foods, eating vegetables and fruits (prebiotic fiber), unpasteurized cheese and yogurt (probiotics), and reducing antibiotic meat. He has also increased the diversity of his diet to include 20 to 30 different types of food every week. Many of the researchers were actively looking at different types of food choices and how they impact the gut microbiome and the results.

Researchers on the program included:

Dr. Arya Sharma
Professor of Medicine & Past-Chair in Obesity Research and Management
University of Alberta
@DrSharma

Tim Spector
Professor of Genetic Epidemiology
Author of “The Diet Myth”
@timspector

Ed Yong
Science writer, The Atlantic
@edyong209

Anthropologist Jeff Leach

Dr. Emma Allen-Verco
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology
University of Guelpth

Dr. Krista Power
Agriculture Canada

Dr. Martin Blaser
Author, “Missing Microbes”

Dr. Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello
NYU School of Medicine

Prof. Rob Knight
UC San Diego

The film was produced, directed, and written by Leora Eisen