I watched the documentary Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut after a guy on Vinted (a secondhand marketplace) declined my offer for the book The Mind-Gut Connection—I was hoping to get it for less than the store price. The book was recommended by both the landlord of our previous apartment and a friend, so I’ll end up reading it eventually anyway.

It’s another Netflix documentary—because that’s the easiest to access with a lazy click—called Hack Your Health, a brief piece just under an hour and a half. The film serves as a thought-provoking introduction and mood-setter, and it’s available with Hungarian dubbing too. Throughout the documentary, the importance of our microbiome and its crucial role is discussed, focusing on four individuals’ stories, while a young German scientist, Giulia Enders, enthusiastically shares her insights on gut research.

Giulia Enders is no stranger to the topic; she’s written several books on gut health and has given TED talks on the subject (with subtitles available below).

Back to the documentary, it features a pastry chef whose stomach only feels fine when she eats vegetables, a psychologist who experiences stomach pain from almost everything, a mother who can’t lose weight no matter what she tries, and a competitive eater who never feels hungry.

What makes the film truly interesting is these four people—aside from the fact that the topic itself is fascinating (it touches on the gut as the second brain and the gut-brain connection).

Through the microbiomes of these seemingly random individuals, the film demonstrates that what we eat directly influences the types of bacteria in our gut. For example, if you constantly consume sugary foods, you’ll crave more of them because the sugar-loving bacteria will dominate your gut.

This is why a varied diet (consuming 20-30 different plants per week) is so important—it promotes a diverse gut microbiome, which can make us more resistant to allergies and better at managing inflammation. Although the documentary doesn’t delve too deeply into these topics, it explains the basics clearly and understandably.

In short, if you’re not sure what to watch, Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut is worth the one hour and twenty minutes—you might even feel inspired to explore the topic further afterward. I was already interested; now I’m just waiting for a good deal on Vinted!