A Gut Health Dietitian’s Review of The Netflix Documentary: Hack Your Health (2024).
I am a registered dietitian and my goal is clear: support you to find the best possible North Star to help you further increase your impact and legacy over the world while at the same time healing your gut as well as reducing irritable bowel syndrome and various digestive symptoms. My objective is to motivate you to be and feel healthy and to furnish you with education and tools that help you take the initiative to advance toward your health goals.
I would like to first say that I don’t watch a lot of TV, mostly because we have a myriad of other life responsibilities, but from time to time, I would put my air pods and watch something on my iPad while scraping dishes, folding laundry, and other stuff like that. These chores don’t seem as tedious at that late hour. So as I was looking for interesting things to go through, I stumbled upon this new Netflix documentary, quite interestingly titled Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut, which is quite a recent one and concerns gut health. (Or, as I can imagine, if you actually specialize in science or the field of nutrition and more specifically the one of gut health, it may actually be something that you would want to stop and actually sit down and watch as well as digest everything instead of washing the plates and having it on in the background. But hey, whatever decisions you make are yours to make.)
I shall now share with you my untainted opinions and critical appraisal of the video entitled Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut.
First Thoughts Regarding The Centerpiece of This Gut Health Documentary
I must admit that I was a bit judgmental in the beginning simply on the basis of the fact that several of these documentaries available on Netflix seem to be purposefully biased towards a particular standpoint. However, as regards these food and health documentaries, I am somewhat cautious on account of the prejudiced angle they tend to have all too often. But curiosity got the better of me It seemed rather interesting. In other words, I wanted to understand what they were saying and why they were saying it. I was curious if it was correct, incorrect, or if it had a bent.
All in all, I was quite pleasantly surprised which is saying something for a registered dietitian dealing with issues related to gut health and other aspects of digestion! I do think that this gut health documentary is very relevant as it would further the cause of making people understand the importance of the gut, digestive tract, and microbiome in relation to one’s health and well-being at large.
This is something that frequently annoys me because very few people actually understand what is meant by what I often say, ‘Sure, I 100% want you to feel better but it’s not ONLY about your gut’ It is laziness that they are FIRST LOOKING for gut symptoms for. Even if these people come with active gut symptoms first, it is still worth repeating these are not the only functions of your gut. There is so much more in play as to how well one age, its chronic disease prevalence risk, etc. And research after research keeps coming up which reinforces the same.
Such are the few things that I often ask in crossover branding materials- Gut, Aging, Chronic disease, and infection. It is something that the book All Edge Health: The Secrets of Your Gut truly highlighted for me. The Various Purposes of Hunger: Now there were a few things which I agree with and a few I don’t agree with this critique I will present here.
However, a word of wisdom: Don’t worry. This is not a spoiler alert about the documentary that I want to make you feel uncomfortable with, rather I highly recommend that you watch it. As for the succeeding review, allow me to say that this is all based on the film in terms of its visuals, its cinematography, its detailing, and at the same time, their disparity is not too prominent in one’s mind when distributing praise because there are indeed things people tend to overlook or miss all together while watching it I feel. I touch on why I liked the film, what parts impressed me, and why I think it is worth considering, as well as some important information that some may not like to see as the first part of their movie or documentary.
What I Liked About the Film More Than the Others
To begin with, the documentary cast me into a very much appraised level of embracing glad because of the comprehensive worldview which somehow is the broad insight but diving into particulars one by one. There is a great need for clarity on how within our culture as a whole and within our culture in health care specifically, we seem to have all of these distinct doctors practicing various specialties, and each one caters to a distinct aspect of health or system of the body. But hold on! Everything is connected! We are all human beings. Everything in your body, including your microbiome, helps. I thought the documentary was quite effective in both describing and visualizing how this is so important.
The viewers are informed about the who, the what, and the how, so the film was not entirely silent. There was a description of how digestion occurs and moving further, the workings of the gut were presented. For part of it, they are in a gut health museum with all these interactive gut health displays, in which they show you physiologically how your gut and stomach work! Moreover, they incorporate researchers and in-field professionals in these explanations as well. Apart from this, they also have these really cute animations that help strengthen their points and convey the message especially because some of these concepts are quite complex and hard to grasp for those who do not have a background in biology, sciences, or nutrition – which most people don’t. I believe these explanations are quite valuable… because when we are looking at something, and more specifically, how it works and how it should work, there is a lot of comparison that can be made her in relation to the human body as well frameworks.
This documentary, to my surprise, really does help in this neverÂending confusion regarding gut health and the microbiome. If someone has any questions regarding gut health, digestion in general or the gut microbiome, this documentary covers all of those in a pretty decent manner.
As a second benefit, because of the cute animations and interactive museum displays, it wasn’t a dry science review. It became something that was relatable, enjoyable, and comprehendible to a common individual.
This documentary did a good job explaining food sensitivities and how difficult it is to branch out your diet when you have IBS! So if you are someone who suffers from chronic bowel symptoms, has an LPD (limited patient diet), and wishes to add more variety to your eating frequency, then ‘Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut’ devotes a fair amount of attention to the why’s and how’s of the problem.
Spoilers ahead! For food sensitivities, they suggest what I suggest my patients as well, namely to micro-dose new food items that you think you are sensitive to as long as it is not a true food allergy (If it is a true food allergy then that is a different ball game!). But if it is something that you assume is causing you burning in your chest or bloating, then for instance, start with one single bite and see how you perform and increase it from there on. The reason being you do not have those organisms present in your intestinal tract, which in normal cases can help in the degradation of certain fibers and food, so you react to them. In time, you can appropriately reshape your gut microflora using micro-dosing as a trigger foods method. It is a fun documentary so be sure to watch it because it expands a lot more on this topic!
They also did an extremely good job of covering the phenomenon of the gut-brain connection. They talk about the gut-brain axis. Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, all of that. They talk about how our cognitive processes and feelings related to emotions affect our gut structure and function and vice versa which becomes an issue because it can get stuck in a negative feedback cycle.
This is something that I actually do when working with my clients within my signature program, Gut Rehab, as well. There is a mental aspect added to my program since that gut-brain relationship is of utmost importance. If you ignore it, it will completely sabotage your results.
The last part of this documentary that I found really good is they endorse another gut healthy tactic which I often recommend which is eating twenty to thirty different fruits and vegetables each week. This has been shown to tremendously reduce your gut symptoms and any gut health issues. It’s all in the variety because we want a lot of different types of organisms living in our gut to balance everything out. One organism shouldn’t be allowed to dominate. So, varying your diet and not having the same type of meal over and over again will a long way in preventing that from happening.
Colored paper cut illustrations of bacteria with no symbol, Hack Your Health
The Faults I Found in Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut
There is this one thing that I disagree with now, I have mentioned this in the past:
1) Gut microbiome testing is, in my opinion: can be useful
The movie states that figuring out your microbiome through testing isn’t all that useful, even. Actually, in some aspects, I don’t completely hold a different opinion on this. For instance, I never give a targeted probiotic to grow one type of organism, because it’s a dynamic and ever-changing microbiome. The fact is, it may take 4 to 8 weeks for us to see the effects of a probiotic. So from this perspective and in relation to the tests, knowing your exact levels is not useful; there is no point in using a super focused strategy where all you do is target certain types of organisms.
The area in which I’m against is where they claim that gut testing can be very useful to have a basic idea regarding the layout of your entire gut, what might be the issues with it, how well are you able to digest the food, and almost a hundred other bacterial organisms that might be harmful, and many inflammation markers. This is very useful information indeed which is very good to know and understand.
2) My opinion: I don’t endorse at-home fecal transfusion.
The film demonstrated in some detail one of the girls they were researching who was performing an at-home fecal microbial transplantation. Yes, fecal transplants can be life-saving, especially in patients with Cdiff. Fecal transplants can be extremely useful for patients who have chronic inflammatory bowel diseases that are not responsive to other treatments but a home-based method like this I would never advocate for. I believe there are far too many dangers involved.
What if that other person has bad bacteria? You have this girl who was in the video who said that she was performing this procedure with her brother’s stool and her brother has a history of anxiety and depression. While she was doing it, the level of her depression increased. So I think this is quite an under-researched area and there exists a real risk to perpetrate serious harm. So that is something I clearly do not encourage you to do.
In conclusion
I especially recommend watching the 2024 movie from Netflix on gut health Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut. For me, it is a good film to increase your knowledge of the how’s and why’s of the gut and digestion system and provides very important tips on how to improve gut health.
I trust you’ve managed to ignite your passions and your fire to go ahead and create the changes you need to in your health.
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