Listen to the episodeDigestion
Henrik Munck Roager
Henrik Roager is associated professor and head of the research group Nutrition, Microbiome & Metabolomics at the Department of Nutrition, Exercise & Sports, University of Copenhagen.
The research group studies how the gut microbiome contributes to digestion and health, and transforms this knowledge to more personalized nutrition strategies and novel food products for improvement of health and wellbeing.
Henrik has been working with digestion and gut bacteria and the microbiome for the last 15 years, and has a background in biotechnology.
About the episode
Digestion is more than just food going in, gets digested, and comes out again. It is a far more complex process and the gut microbiome is only a part of the process at the very end of it. In this episode Henrik Munck Roager walks through what actually happens from gum to bum, and why the colon, long treated as a black box, turns out to regulate far more than just waste.
He also explains why transit time, how long food takes to move through your system, is an important factor for health, but that it varies wildly between people. Why a sluggish gut can leave bacteria "starving" and turning to less favorable food sources, and what that has to do with constipation and gut-brain communication particular in woman.
03:15 - What happens in the body when we eat
10:15 - How the gut bacteria affects the body
13:42 - Why bowel movement is important for your health
23:02 - How the microbiome plays a role in digestion
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