The ‘heal your gut’ trend leaves out individualism

The ‘heal your gut’ social media trend has taken over with chiseled bods and lettuce chips. But with the focus on aesthetic benefits, it's been forgotten that every body is different.

A trend of healing your gut has circulated over the past few months. Many posts include users showing off their weight loss and listing foods to cut from your diet. Naturopath Twyla Watson B, who started The Gut Healing Protocol, said a restrictive diet is “not necessarily” the way to heal your gut. “Every body looks different, so we can’t really say that your body has to look one way or you should be trying to achieve this one look and then you’ll be healthy and happy, cause that’s not true.”

#guthealing has 137 million views on TikTok, #healyourgut has 47.9 million views on TikTok and #guthealth has 4.2 million posts on Instagram. But, with unqualified strangers telling people how to eat, it can become problematic.

“One of the things that is problematic about this trend toward gut healing and using a restrictive diet is that often you aren’t given a clear guideline about how long you should be restricting foods or the process for reintroducing foods,” Watson said. “Everyone is an individual and there's not one blanket approach that can work for everyone.”

While many users have said healing their gut ‘saved their life’, it’s not something everyone actually needs to do. Watson said, “Everyone can support their gut to be healthy, but no, not everyone will need to heal their gut, some people might have a healthy gut.”

“Everyone can benefit from supporting their gut health, this may be through nutrition or lifestyle, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone needs to take drastic measures to heal their gut.”

Watson said her practice is different from the healing your gut social media trend. “It's evidence based and it’s a lot more individualised. I’m definitely trying to make sure that people don’t end up on highly restrictive diets long term.”

“I want people to feel better in their bodies and be able to think more clearly so that they can reach their potential.”

Watson’s top three tips to a healthy gut are managing stress, eating a variety of plant foods and avoiding the overuse of antibiotics.