“It’s IN you, it’s ON you. It’s YOU!” This is the wordplay used to introduce a new four-part video series about human gut microbiota that’s just been released by the Canadian Digestive Health Foundation. This animation project pursues the goal of educating people on how to protect, enhance and improve their digestive health.
The videos invite the audience to explore the rich and diverse world within us, formed by over 100 trillion, brightly-coloured, microorganisms: the bacterial ‘superheroes’ living in our guts! We learn how these “superheroes” work to protect us, or how they may be affected by diet or probiotics.
We celebrate this new educational, easy way of learning about the essential role that the gut flora plays in our overall health.
Giovana Martucelli is a nutritionist with a specialization in Clinical and Hospital Nutrition and practical training in Nutritional Therapy. She is currently a Master’s student in Gastroenterology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of São Paulo (FMUSP), where she works as a researcher at the Laboratory of Nutrition and Metabolic Surgery of the Digestive System (METANUTRI/LIM-35).
With over seven years of research experience, she has built a strong background in the field of gut microbiota, with a particular focus on precision medicine. She is the author of several works presented at national and international conferences and has received awards such as the Best of ASPEN – GI Topics (2025) and the Research Travel Award (ESPEN, 2024).
Mónica Quinzo is a biomedical researcher working on her PhD about gut parasitic nematodes and vaccine research at the National Center of Microbiology in Madrid. She holds a bachelor’s in Biochemistry and a master’s in Immunology. She is passionate about the role of the gut microbiome in the modulation of host immunity in health and disease. She is really concerned about the importance of empowering people through scientific communication to enable conscious and healthier decisions. Follow Mónica on twitter:
Konstantina Zafeiropoulou is a dietitian with strong scientific interest in the diet-microbiota interactions and their role in human health and disease. She holds a Master of Science in Human Nutrition from the University of Glasgow, during which she explored the involvement of gut microbiota in the etiopathogenesis of Celiac Disease and evaluated the gluten free diet-microbiota interactions. She is currently a PhD candidate at Amsterdam UMC unraveling the role of gut microbiota and long-term dietary patterns in the development of postoperative colorectal anastomotic leakage. Follow Konstantina on Twitter