Netflix recently released a documentary titled “Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut,” and if you haven’t watched it, I encourage you to consider doing so. Whether you’re here because you’re interested in weight management or narcissism recovery, watching “Hack Your Health” could benefit you.
How so, you ask? "Hack Your Health" explores cutting-edge research on gut health, and how having a healthy gut can positively influence your body and mind.
There’s emerging research that suggests strong links between gut health and every aspect of weight management. There are also clear links between gut health and psychological stress. Obviously, being in a relationship with someone with narcissistic traits is stressful. That stress can negatively influence gut health.
So how does gut health affect your mind and body? If you’ve ever been hit in the stomach, you already know there’s a collection of nerves in your gut. What you may not know is that the collection of nerves in your gut does far more than respond to physical pain. That collection of nerves in your gut is your enteric nervous system, or more casually, your gut brain.
Research is discovering that your gut brain is just as amazing as your brain and central nervous system. The gut brain doesn’t require input from the brain to digest and absorb food. In fact, about 80% of gut-brain communication is from the gut to the brain. That communication is called the gut-brain axis.
In addition, about 50% of the body’s dopamine and 90% of the body’s serotonin is produced in the gut. Dopamine and serotonin are both involved in feelings of well-being, and influence depression, addiction, and other mental health concerns. Given the importance of dopamine and serotonin in managing mental well-being, it’s not surprising that research is finding more and more links between gut health and mental health.
“Hack Your Health” explains the connections between gut health, mental health, and a variety of gut-related disorders. It’s a family-friendly introduction to the gut-brain axis. Felt art and adorable cartooning illustrate the scientific ideas, making it easy to understand and enjoyable to watch.
The documentary itself follows the journeys of four individuals who have eating concerns, ranging from difficulty with food variety to a competitive eater. Their concerns aren’t necessarily relatable, but their stories are intriguing.
“Hack Your Health” promotes two takeaways. First, it suggests that gut health is improved by eating a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, legumes (beans, peas, lentils), and nuts and seeds. “Hack Your Health” recommends you should “Always Be Counting” with the aim of eating at least one serving of 30 different fruits, veggies, legumes, and nuts and seeds weekly.
Second, the recommendation is to gradually increase from wherever you’re at by one or two new foods weekly. As a firm believer that change is most likely to be sustainable when it’s evolutionary rather than revolutionary, I can’t agree enough.
Also, amping up your intake of fruits, veggies, legumes, and nuts and seeds will increase your fiber intake. If you do so suddenly, you’re likely to experience either diarrhea or constipation. And you’ll want to make sure you’re drinking enough water, too, so making change slowly just makes sense.
Of course, I’d suggest you talk to your health care provider about making changes to your eating pattern before you begin. If you and your doctor agree that it’s safe for you to do so, I’d suggest tracking what you eat for a week, without making any changes.
Then, consider where you can easily add in one or maybe two different fruits, veggies, legumes, or nuts or seeds into your current eating pattern. Keep adding in one or two new ABC foods a week until you reach 30 a week. The gradual addition will allow your gut to adjust to the additional fiber, and make it easier for you to be successful with maintenance.
Here's a bonus reason to watch "Hack Your Health." One specific topic it addresses are cravings, perhaps one of the most maddening challenges in weight management. “Hack Your Health” explores the research investigating whether cravings happen because we have gut bacteria that require us to eat certain foods for them to survive.
This makes tremendous sense to me. I've never agreed with the idea that we crave things because there's some nutrient value to the food. Even if you argue that ice cream has calcium in it, many other foods have roughly the same amount of calcium. Yes, chocolate has a variety of minerals in it, but nuts and seeds contain far more. So why do people crave a chocolate cookie, not a handful of nuts and a glass of milk? There must be some other reason, and "Hack Your Health" provides an alternative hypothesis.
And while my personal experience can’t be applied to anyone else, I’ve found that getting in those 30 a week has affected my sweet tooth. After watching “Hack Your Health,” I tracked what I ate for a week, and I was surprised to discover that although I generally eat healthy, I ate the same 15 fruits, vegetables, legumes, and nuts and seeds throughout the week. And although I love legumes and nuts and seeds, they weren’t always in my weekly menu.
So, I gradually made several changes to my eating habits. First, I added an extra ingredient to the recipes I was already preparing. I added mushrooms to spaghetti sauce, sprinkled sunflower or pumpkin seeds on salads, and added frozen four-berry mix to plain Greek yogurt, instead of using just one fruit.
I also was more conscious about choosing a different non-starchy vegetable as a side dish. I could eat broccoli every day of the week with pretty much any meal. Instead, I made a point of switching it up and planned for carrots, green beans, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, or tomato-cucumber salad as side dishes.
I added in a legume-based meal to my cycle menu weekly. (On a side note, this is one of the benefits of a cycle menu. When I noticed legumes were lacking, tweaking my cycle menu was simple.) And many of my legume recipes include more than one legume, or allow me to add in another non-starchy vegetable.
Finally, I traded in my midafternoon snack of peppermint patties, and replaced them with a different dried fruit and nut combination daily. Instead of highly-processed, high-sugar peppermint patties, I’m enjoying pistachios with cherries, hazelnuts with apricots, figs with cashews, dates with Brazil nuts, bananas with pumpkin seeds, and coconut and pineapple with macadamias.
Interestingly, while I still enjoy the occasional dessert, my sweet tooth has completed faded away since I’ve focused on ABC. In fairness, my issues with cravings and sugary foods has been changing gradually for years. There was a time when I couldn’t have certain foods in my house. Cashews, pita chips, ice cream, frosting, avocados—if I had them in the house, I’d eat them until they were gone. Now that I’ve moved through the stages of grief with regard to narcissism, those cravings are…gone.
My sweet tooth persisted, though, and I looked forward to my peppermint patties every afternoon. But now that I've been focusing on ABC for a few months, plain yogurt with a half-cup of thawed frozen mixed berries tastes sweet! I still enjoy desserts, but I no longer crave something sugary-sweet.
Changing your eating habits by focusing on ABC isn’t likely to change everything about your life and radically alter your physical and mental health. But you will be challenged to say yes to healthy foods, and say no to less healthy food choices. Eating more healthfully will benefit you, regardless of how it affects your gut-brain axis!
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