Giulia Enders Quotes

The brain interprets the nerve impulses to form an image. It is not until that happens that we really see the piece of cake. This delicious news is then passed on to the systems that control salivation, with mouth-watering results. Similarly, the mere sight of a yummy treat also causes the stomach to produce some digestive juices in anticipation.

Almost nothing influences our gut bacteria as much as the food we eat. Preboiotics are the most powerful tool at our disposal if we want to support our good bacteria - that is, those that are already there and are there to stay.

Breast milk is so beneficial that a more or less well-nourished mother need not do any more than suckle her baby to ensure it is receiving a healthy diet. When it comes to the nutrients it contains, breast milk provides everything that dietary scientists believe children need in order to thrive - it is the best dietary supplement ever. It contains everything, knows everything, and can do everything necessary for a child's well-being. And, as if that weren't enough, it has the added advantage of passing on a bit of Mom's immune system to her offspring.

I'm sometimes shocked by the way scientists huddle behind closed doors to discuss important research results without informing the public about them at all. Academic caution is often preferable to premature publication, but fear can also destroy opportunities.

The fructose intake of the average American is currently close to 3 ounces (80 grams) a day. Our parents' generation, consuming just honey on their toast, far fewer processed foods, and a normal amount of fruit, took in no more than ½ to 1 ounce (only around 16 to 24 grams) a day.

The world is a much more interesting place if we look beyond what is visible to the naked eye.

Silly stress at the office or exam-related anxiety become less threatening when we refuse to let them affect us so personally.

Overproduction of gas is not a pleasant thing - it bloats the gut, making us feel uncomfortable - but passing a bit of wind is not only necessary, it is healthy, too. We are living creatures with a miniature world living inside us, working away and producing many things. Just as we release exhaust fumes into the Earth's atmosphere, so must our microbes, too. It may make a funny sound and it may smell a bit, but not necessarily. Bifidobacteria and Lactobacilli, for instance, do not produce any unpleasant odors. People who never need to break wind are starving their gut bacteria and are not good hosts for their microbe guests. Pure prebiotics can be bought at

We humans have known since time immemorial something that science is only now discovering: our gut feeling is responsible in no small measure for how we feel. We are "scared shitless" or we can be "shitting ourselves" with fear. If we don't manage to complete a job, we can't get our "ass in gear." We "swallow" our disappointment and need time to "digest" a defeat. A nasty comment leaves a "bad taste in our mouth." When we fall in love, we get "butterflies in our stomach." Our self is created in our head and our gut - no longer just in language, but increasingly also in the lab.

Every day we live and every meal we eat we influence the great microbial organ inside us - for better or for worse.

The gut has not only a remarkable system of nerves to gather all this information, but also a huge surface area. That makes it the body's largest sensory organ. Eyes, ears, nose, or the skin pale by comparison. The information they gather is received by the conscious mind and used to formulate a response to our environment. They can be seen as life's parking sensors. The gut, by contrast, is a huge matrix, sensing our inner life and working on the subconscious mind.

As it happens, the higher the hygiene standards in a country, the higher that nation's incidence of allergies and autoimmune diseases. The more sterile a household is, the more its members will suffer from allergies and autoimmune diseases. Thirty years ago, about one person in ten had an allergy; today, that figure is one in three.

By preferring cooked food, the body outsources the first part of the digestive process.

Sweetness is not in itself unhealthy, we simply eat only the most unhealthy kind of sweetness.

Those people who post pictures of their dinner on Facebook, only to be disappointed by the lack of "likes" from friends, are simply trying to appeal to the wrong audience. If there were such a thing as Facebug (Facebook for microbes!), a picture of your dinner would provoke an excited response from millions of users - and shudders of disgust from millions more. The menu changes daily: useful milk digesters contained in a cheese sandwich, armies of Salmonella bacteria hiding in a delicious dish of tiramisu.

Scientists are cautiously beginning to question the view that the brain is the sole and absolute ruler over the body. The gut not only possesses an unimaginable number of nerves, those nerves are also unimaginably different from those of the rest of the body. The gut commands an entire fleet of signaling substances, nerve-insulation materials, and ways of connecting. There is only one other organ in the body that can compete with the gut for diversity - the brain. The gut's network of nerves is called the "gut brain" because it is just as large and chemically complex as the gray matter in our heads. Were the gut solely responsible for transporting food and producing the occasional burp, such a sophisticated nervous system would be an odd waste of energy. Nobody would create such a neural network just to enable us to break wind. There must be more to it than that.

Looking closer at human beings, it becomes clear that each of us is a world of our own. Our forehead is a breezy meadow, our elbows are arid wastelands, our eyes are salty lakes, and our gut is the most amazing giant forest ever, populated by the weirdest of creatures.

While some of us might be sitting around thinking "Nobody cares about me!", our heart is currently working its seventeen-thousandth twenty-four-hour shift - and would have every right to feel a little forgotten when its owner thinks such thoughts.

globalization and air transport mean that we are now exposed to a previously unheard-of overabundance of fruit. Pineapples from the tropics nestle on our supermarket shelves in the middle of winter, next to fresh strawberries from Mexico, and some dried figs from Morocco. So, what we label a food intolerance may in fact be nothing more than the reaction of a healthy body as it tries to adapt within a single generation to a food situation that was completely unknown during the millions of years of our evolution.

More than 95 percent of the world's bacteria are harmless to humans. Many are extremely beneficial. Disinfectants have no place in a normal household. They are appropriate only if a family member is sick or the dog poops on the carpet.