Book Review: Gut Health Beyond Basics

Reviewed by Jaylynn Korrell

A useful book about gut health that’s easy to digest

Gut health has been a hot topic lately, but tips on how to achieve a healthy gut can often feel vague. Is it as easy as drinking a kombucha every once in a while and avoiding carbs? I don’t have the answers. Luckily, Reid Ashford does.

In Gut Health Beyond Basics, Ashford dives into the myths of gut health as well as the facts and first-hand experiences that will make you feel like cultivating a healthy gut is actually possible.

This book feels like it was written by a good friend. Its backbone is in helpfulness and encouragement. I’ve been curious about gut health for a while now, and I know a thing or two when it comes to the basics. This book is packed with tips and tricks to not only understand your gut health but to optimize it. With a few tweaks to your everyday life, you can achieve better gut health and sustain the progress moving forward.

As a city dweller with a busy career and children, Ashford comes down to the reader’s level by illustrating just how little spare time he has. That for the time-afflicted, this is possible. This book’s tips come across as achievable knowing that he’s living in a hectic time like I am. He suggests small changes like drinking more water and offers detailed diet instructions that can make a real difference. The personal approach of this book is what makes it so appealing. It’s not written by a scientist going over our heads but by a normal person who has done the research and created solutions in his own life.

Nearly everything is related to your gut health. It’s not just cutting carbs. The amount of water you drink impacts your gut. The amount of exercise you get impacts your gut. Your overall mood is even impacted by your gut. And your gut can dictate your energy levels throughout the day, leaking and disrupting parts of your body you had no idea could be hit by it. The list goes on.

At first, it feels a bit daunting to hear that so many things can throw your gut off balance, but soon, Ashford’s accessible tips and advice touch on a wide variety of simple possible solutions to popular gut issues. We cover things like brain fog, IBS, weight gain, and more.

Though Beyond Basics is in its title, it doesn’t feel like it goes too far beyond it. It doesn’t get too technical or dive too deeply into many of the subjects. It touches briefly on a wide variety of topics and is a good introduction, but it does leave you to dig further into the subjects you’re most interested in.

Ashford’s laid-back tone is refreshing in a lot of ways, but when it comes to the actual science of it all, I wanted something more concrete. He often uses the phrase “Science backs this up” instead of supplying us with scientific studies or research articles.

With that said, there is a long list of references at the end of the book for those looking to research further into any specific subject. The appendix is particularly useful in that it comes with recipes and food prep instructions for things like fermented dishes. Creating fermented foods seems like a science experiment in itself, so this is a cool little section to explore.

Gut Health Beyond Basics is a clear introductory book for those interested in improving the heath of their gut.

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