Gut Myths Guide
Food, Mood and Symptoms Diary

FAQs

Questions answered by Dr Nick Read.

2023 marks 25 years of Love Your Gut Week – the annual campaign encouraging and educating us all on how to look after our digestive health. To mark the occasion, we’ve charted the top gut health milestones, discoveries and developments over the past 25 years
1998 - Love Your Gut Week launches (with the help of Yakult & partners)
2001 - The word microbiome is used for the first time by Nobel Laureate and Microbiologist, Joshua Lederberg
2002 - Probiotics are officially recognised by the United Nations and World Health Organization as live microorganisms that could lead to health benefits for the human host
2003 - The 5-a-day campaign is introduced
2007 – The Human Microbiome Project launches. The overall mission of this was to generate resources to facilitate characterisation of the human microbiota to further our understanding of how the microbiome impacts human health and disease.
2010 – Research discovers the gut has neurons
2013 - The term psychobiotics is created by Dr. Ted Dinan after researching the impact that certain live cultures can have on the mood of their host
2015 – Primary Care Society for Gastroenterology launches the ‘Think GI Cancer’ campaign, which aims to highlight the importance of early gastroenterological cancer diagnosis and raise awareness of how doctors can best help their patients
2017 – Crohn’s & Colitis Ireland launches
2020 – Insurances of Coeliac Disease are reported to be increasing
2021 – Scientific research links fermented foods to gut health
2021 – Guts UK (formerly known as Core and the Digestive Disorders Foundation) turns 50 years old
2021 – Public interest in the link between the gut-brain axis grows, physiological symptoms are mentioned more in relation to gut health than physical ones
2022 – In response to colonoscopy services in the UK experiencing growing pressures, St Mark’s Hospital launches the WAVE study - comparing two colonoscopy techniques to identify which is better at reducing pain and procedure time, as well as being the most effective at improving the detection of pre-cancerous and cancerous growths
2022 - IGPNEA launches its first multiple module course, accepts its first Irish HealthCare Award for Best Educational Meeting and reaches over 1,000 members for the first time
2022 – #Guttok reaches 500 million views on TikTok
2023 – IBS Network teams up with brand partner to launch the UK’s first certified low FODMAP meal range
2023 – Love Your Gut celebrates its 25th anniversary