Gutted

As a kid in central Illinois, some cows in the fields had portholes in their sides. That's how I learned that cows have 4 stomachs, each one its own bacteria factory specialized in a different step of digesting grass into nutrients.

But only recently did I realize something similar is important in our guts too. While we don't have separate stomachs, we do have regions in the gut where -- if things are going right -- we foster bacteria 🦠 that turns our food into nutrients our body needs, nutrients that don't exist in the food for our bodies to use until the bacteria do their work.

7 Aug 2024 © Rebecca L. Shapley