Gudrun Jonsson - Gut Reaction

Rating: 4/5

Review: 
Good but flawed

This is a book about the gut and its role in illness, and maintains that the proper functioning of the gut is essential to good health. The book has much sensible advice to offer but I do have reservations about it.

Jonsson begins with a clear and genuinely interesting explanation of the working of the gut and how it can go wrong, and talks a great deal of good sense about toxicity and malabsorbtion. There is valuable advice on general health, lifestyle and stress. She is particularly good on how and when to eat, and gives sound dietary advice.

Sadly, though, this generally well-argued book is flawed (as are a lot of books on complementary medicine) by a number of wild assertions. For example, Jonsson gives convincing evidence that a proper acid/alkali balance is essential to gut function. Then she says, "If this balance is right, it is chemically impossible for the body to become diseased." But this would mean that proper acid/alkali balance in the gut would prevent, say, HIV, or gangrene, or cholera. Really?

To make the unsupported leap from saying that a correct balance is essential to good health to saying that it will prevent all known diseases is plain silly. Jonsson weakens a powerful case with such an absurdly exaggerated claim. There are other examples of this in the book, and they do complementary medicine a disservice in two ways: they make it easy for sceptics to mock otherwise good ideas, and they may put off the open-minded.

This book is well worth a look, though. Eating sensibly and looking after your gut can only benefit your health, and for those with gut dysfunction of any kind it may well be of real help so, provided you're wary of its more exaggerated claims, I would recommend it.