Allergies and weight gain: it’s all about the gut

These days it’s not unusual for Dr James Kinross, a consultant surgeon and clinical senior lecturer in colorectal surgery at Imperial College London, to see thirtysomethings in his clinic with bowel cancer. “This is no longer a disease of older people,” he says. As he writes in his important and devastating new book, Dark Matter – The New Science of the Microbiome, a millennial’s risk of bowel cancer is four times that of a boomer.

Not only that, food allergies have risen by 50 per cent in the past decade, disproportionately affecting young people. Allergy is now the most common chronic disease in Europe (I’m keen to know why I got hay fever for the first time after my second child was born).

Immunological

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