The Body as Teacher with Giulia Enders, MD
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
At The Nocturnist, we are careful to ensure that all stories comply with healthcare privacy laws. Details may have been changed to ensure patient confidentiality. All views expressed are those of the person speaking and not their employer.
This is The Nocturnist. I'm Emily Silverman. Today's episode features Dr. Julia Enders, a physician, gastroenterologist, and best-selling author of Gut, whose fascination with the body began not in medical school, but as a teenager trying to understand a mysterious skin disease. That experience led her down a path of studying the gut, writing a best-selling book before she had even graduated from medical school, and eventually caring for patients with complex gastrointestinal illnesses. But over the years, it was something beyond physiology that captured her attention. She began noticing the language her patients used to describe themselves. I'm broken. I need to function. My body failed me. And she wondered what might change if we stopped thinking about the body as a machine to repair and started seeing it as something wiser.
In my conversation with Julia, we talk about her new book, Organ Speak, and how our organs can become unexpected teachers. Not just about health, but about grief, relationships, immunity, boundaries, sleep, and what it means to live well. We also explore the power of metaphor and how the stories we tell about our bodies can shape the way we experience illness itself. Take a listen to Julia reading from her new book, Organ Speak.
how our body solves problems is fascinating time and again i was able to come up with tips for my own life and i felt as if i were in an ice cream parlor full of answers understanding the body isn't just useful for preventing illness Our organs also have a substantial say in what it means to be ourselves. They're involved in key questions such as what do we really need?
What sparked Giulia Enders’ early fascination with the gut and how did it begin?
How do we deal with threats? How do we want to treat each other? Or even what can we achieve and how do we do this? If we could better understand the answers from our body, we could lead a more harmonious life. Beyond illnesses and pandemics, however, The body rarely leads the way in public debate, and even when it does, some of the things we think we understand about it are rather out of date.
I am sitting here with Dr. Julia Enders. Julia, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. So Julia, you are a physician. Yes. And I read in the first chapter of your book, Oregon Speak, you were reflecting a bit about your journey to medicine and your journey to writing. And I I thought it was really interesting where you wrote, I think you said you got really interested in the gut at a pretty young age, like in your 20s, and you knew you wanted to go into gastroenterology medicine. So before we talk about this new book, I was wondering if you could just tell us a bit about becoming a physician and this early fascination that you had with the body and then in particular with the gut, which, as we know, led to your bestseller book,
Guts. So this was already in my teenage years even. And I had suddenly gotten this skin disease when I was 17. And it just developed quickly and spread all over. And I had these open wounds. And I was really confused to what this was. And going to the doctor, I got some steroid creams. I would put it on. It would go away. If I then stopped, it would come back right away. And I just sat there this one day because I had to wear leggings in order for it not to wet through my pants, all these open wounds. And I sat there and I thought, isn't it so weird that I'll be living with this body for probably like 60 or 70 more years and I know so little about it. And I can't help myself and I have no idea what's going on.
And I felt this was kind of odd and it really got me started reading about the body. And then soon I realized, well, I find everything very interesting and I can read even when I'm really tired or feel a bit sick or something. I just read and read and read and it doesn't even stop.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:15
2
What sparked Giulia Enders’ early fascination with the gut and how did it begin?
2:15–18:49
3
How did a teenage skin condition lead Giulia to study the gut and write her first book?
18:49–42:17
4
What was the process of turning her research into the bestseller *Gut* while still in medical school?
42:17–45:33