IF health were a religion, it’s fair to say I grew up among devout believers. Homemade sourdough, sauerkraut and–the sourest of them all–the giant gelatinous kombucha pellicle bubbling away on the kitchen shelf were my toast-and-tea growing up.
A saintly diet was not my priority when I flew the nest, but the frivolity was disappointingly short-lived. Within a year my energy plummeted to a state of alarming lethargy, and painful eczema cracked the skin on my hands with such ferocity that I couldn’t hold a pen to take lecture notes. I was eventually declared intolerant to pretty much everything bar breathing but, despite doggedly sticking to a holier-than-thou elimination diet, there was no improvement. I was, in a very literal sense, a misery guts.
‘Even a small change in our microbiome can have a snowball effect,’ says Professor Phil Hansbro, author of and director of the Centenary UTS Centre for Inflammation in Australia. ‘Inflammation and
