How To Heal 20 Years of Gut Damage in 30 Days

When I was 21, I was diagnosed with severe inflammatory bowel disease. It took me years to figure out how to heal my gut. Today, I’m sharing the science and strategies I wish I’d known from day one.

When I was 21, my body started attacking itself.

Ulcers opened in my intestines.

Food became dangerous.

There was a real chance I could lose my colon entirely. I was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease.

And for years, my life revolved around pain, bathrooms, medications, fear, and this constant question: Why was my gut on fire?

Now, after a PhD in metabolism, after medical school, and far more importantly, after nearly a decade of experimenting on myself obsessively, I have answers.

And, I have tools.

But back then?

I had no idea what was happening to my body. And because of that, I suffered more than I could have imagined. (And I watch a lot of movies with torture scenes.)

So, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this question:

If I could go back to the moment of diagnosis, knowing what I know now: How would I put out the fire as fast as possible?

This letter will answer that question, not just for people with inflammatory bowel disease. But for anyone whose gut feels broken.

Because gut problems exist on a spectrum. And the truth is, most people are somewhere on it. But you don’t need to be.

Let me show you how.

Let me quickly lay out how this is gonna go.

• I’m going to start by outlining free foundational tools to support gut health — tools that you can implement immediately, even while reading this letter.

• Then we will turn to some dietary principles beyond just “cut out sugar and processed food,” which I hope is implicit.

• Finally, we will turn to the ultimate peptide stack for gut health. Nothing you need to inject, but powerful peptides nonetheless to help with multiple elements of gut healing.

Some of these tools will be free.

Some of them are, transparently, investments.

But if I may insert a personal quip, I’ve found that sometimes it’s worth investing in quality food and, yes, supplements…otherwise, you might end up spending over $2,000 out of pocket for a colonoscopy right after moving to the United Kingdom to do your PhD while living on a somewhat limited scholarship stipend… and then needing to eat sardines at 76 pence a can from Tesco market for months to make up the difference.

True story.

Free Foundational Tools for Gut Healing

Let’s begin with the freest and most accessible tool you have right now: breathing and stress reduction.

Now, if you’re closed-minded — like I admittedly was when I was first diagnosed — this probably sounds like a bunch of woo-woo fluff. It seems far-fetched to imagine that something as simple as chilling out could heal an inflamed gut.

But let me open your eyes to some astonishing science that begins with this hard fact:

You can directly feed your gut bacteria without eating.

How does this work?

• Well, you have glands in your gut, in particular, ones called Brunner’s glands, shown in green below.

• These secrete something called mucin, which nourishes beneficial gut bacteria and, at a very high level, helps build resilience in your gastrointestinal system.

The question then becomes: How do you influence Brunner’s glands?

Well, your gut is directly connected to your brain via something called the vagus nerve. And this nerve, as you may have guessed, is influenced by brain activity and your mental state.

So, in effect, there’s a direct, literal line going from your brain to glands in your gut that can feed or starve bacteria.

*Brunner’s glands are shown here with a green stain. The pathway on the right illustrates how stress reduction can activate the vagus nerve, stimulating mucin production by Brunner’s glands to support the microbiome and improve gut barrier function.

The consequences are tremendous.

For example, if you cut the vagus nerve, or negatively alter the input going through it to these glands, it can cause:

• Severe bloating

• Impairment of intestinal barrier function (“leaky gut”)

• And it can starve good gut bacteria

Quite literally, this is a direct pathway through which your mental state can heal or harm your gut.

*What you’re seeing here is what happens when Brunner’s glands are destroyed (BG-DTx). The result? Extreme bloating. The stomach blows up like a hot-air balloon.

Without getting too deep into the nitty-gritty — although if you want to dig through the 163 panels in the source paper, have at it — the punchline is this:

Stress-reduction activities help feed your gut and heal your gut lining, whereas chronic psychological stress most likely destabilizes and harms it.

The obvious caveat here is that much of the controlled experimental data was collected in animals. However, the exact same biological operating systems exists in humans.

So, I would literally bet my colon that these basic science findings translate to humans.

The question then becomes: how do you activate your vagus nerve in a way that helps nourish your gut?

In the rest of this letter for StayCurious Metabolism premium members, we dive into

• How to leverage your vagus nerve to heal your gut

• Dietary principles that matter most (hint: not fiber)

• The most powerful peptides for gut healing (no injections required).

  • As well as how to access prescription peptides from my peptide doctors

This is not the kind of knowledge I learned in medical school. It’s better. It’s the kind of knowledge I wish I’d had when my body was falling apart. Because if I had understood these mechanisms earlier, I genuinely think I could have avoided years of suffering.

So, if you want the full deep dive come find out why StayCurious Metabolism subscribers getting goosebumps and call these letters ‘life-changing.”