I can't say enough about how much I love Mary Roach and her books. I love weird little facts and she obviously does too. Each book has given me enough to thoroughly creep out and disgust my friends. Gulp is the icing on the cake.
Adventures on the alimentary canal is the subtitle and Roach takes us from mouth to anus on a journey through our food tube. In the beginning, we eat. We learn about saliva, how we chew. Then we head to the stomach (why doesn't the stomach eat itself? It does. We basically have a new stomach every 3 days), to the intestines and out the chute.
Something might be wrong with me in that I read this book even while eating dinner. To quote the book, I've become "numb to the ick factor". I've had Ulcerative Colitis and had a lot of my diseased and pre-cancerous gut removed. I have an ileostomy. Poop and the ins and outs (no pun intended) of the gut just doesn't faze me at all.
I was really happy with the light that was shown on IBD and ostomies. Even if it was brief, it's a much better light than we normally get. Amazingly enough, it was interesting reading about fecal transplants (ick factor!) and how transplanting the healthy bacteria of a gut into a gut ravaged by UC or Crohns could actually save the colon.... well, it brought a tear to my eye!
I can't recommend Mary Roach and her books enough!
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