Your Gut Wants to Talk. Bring Bread.

This Week’s Signal

A few days ago, I found myself at a sourdough workshop — reluctantly. My close friend’s husband couldn’t go, so I subbed in. Adorably, it was his idea. Hanging out with a friend? Easy yes. Touching dough… with my bare hands? Harder sell.

Cooking has simply never been my love language. Blame Wall Street: I started my career working 100-hour weeks and eating every meal at my desk, while the beautiful cookware my parents bought for my tiny NYC apartment gathered dust. Then I moved to Denver, met Sean — who loves to cook — and have outsourced that entire category of life to my one and only ever since. Some people find their flow in the kitchen; I find mine literally anywhere else.

But on a random Wednesday night in the middle of a busy week, I showed up committed. And the class? Honestly fascinating. It wasn’t just kneading and shaping — it was a full-on biology lesson disguised as a popular Covid-era hobby. As a forever student of women’s health, I was instantly, nerdily delighted.

Because here’s the thing: sourdough baking isn’t just Instagram vibes. The science behind sourdough and women’s gut health is… surprisingly real.

What We’re Missing

Women’s digestive systems are uniquely sensitive — influenced by hormones, stress, cycles, pregnancy, postpartum shifts, and perimenopause — which is why bloating, irregularity, and carb sensitivity hit women harder. And this is where sourdough quietly enters the chat.

Sourdough is basically the original “clean ingredient” food: just flour, water, salt. We’ve been eating fermented bread for hundreds of years, and modern research is finally catching up to why it often feels gentler on women’s guts.

• Long fermentation breaks down FODMAPs, the carbs tied to bloating and cramping — a big deal given that women experience IBS-like symptoms at much higher rates. (Laatikainen et al., Gut, 2017)

• Fermentation also boosts anti-inflammatory compounds like butyrate (Arjoni et al., Foods, 2022), reduces phytic acid so minerals like iron are easier to absorb (Koistinen et al., J Agric Food Chem, 2018), and leads to a slower, steadier blood-sugar response — especially important given women’s stronger glucose swings. (Poutanen et al., Curr Dev Nutr, 2022)

• Early evidence suggests sourdough doesn’t add new “good bacteria” like a probiotic — but it may help the good microbes you already have do their job better. (Cloetens et al., Br J Nutr, 2010)

The studies cited are small and short, so there’s still a lot to learn — and sourdough will never be perfectly standardized since every starter (that flour-and-water mixture that ferments into its own unique wild yeast and bacteria) behaves a little differently. But for many women navigating bloating, blood sugar swings, or hormonal shifts, sourdough is a simpler, more ancestral, and often more gut-friendly bread option.

What We’re Seeing

My sourdough epiphany —> research reminded me of another trend: the rapid commercialization of our waste. Yes, poop tech. And I absolutely love it.

I first saw this wave at CES in 2024 while 10 weeks pregnant with Mia — not exactly the ideal moment to be discussing toilets. But the category has exploded since. Here are some favorites:

• Withings U-Scan — $499 + $30/month subscription
  A literal lab in your toilet — but for urine. It analyzes hydration, nutrition, metabolism, and menstrual-cycle markers right from the bowl. (Fine, pee tech. But we don’t all go #2 every time we pop a squat.) Still early, but it points toward everyday biomonitoring that catches gut shifts before you feel them.

• Kohler Dekoda — $599 + $12.99/month for the family plan
  Dekoda takes aim at early detection. This rim-mounted device uses optical sensors and AI to scan what you leave behind for hydration clues, gut-health signals, and trace blood — think of it as a quiet bathroom guardian, not a full microbiome readout. It’s about spotting subtle changes long before they become symptoms.

• Throne — $299 for early access or $499 for full price
  Throne is the moonshot. It uses computer vision and AI to analyze stool and your bathroom habits automatically — no effort required. Instead of a snapshot, it builds a continuous picture of your gut health, turning every visit into passive, real-world microbiome intel. If it scales, this is the frictionless future.

The through-line? The market is responding to a clear demand for better gut health data that women can actually act on. And what’s striking is how accessible these tools already are for such a new category. If people are willing to spend $500+ on an Oura Ring, there’s a real case they’ll invest in tech that delivers insights Oura, Apple, and Whoop simply can’t touch. (And thankfully, none of us health-curious consumers have to actually touch anything either.)

What It Means

Women (and people!) are officially done guessing — about our guts, our hormones, our bloat cycles, all of it. And the market is finally taking the hint. From sourdough to smart potties, we’re seeing a new wave of tools built to actually help women:

• Stop playing symptom roulette (a game none of us signed up for and all of us are losing)

• Understand how hormones are messing with digestion (again)

• Catch small gut shifts before they become full-blown crises

• Turn biomonitoring into something automatic, private, and… kind of fun?

Real-time gut intel is about to become mainstream, which is amazing for women riding the roller coaster of bloating, blood sugar swings, stress spikes, luteal-phase hunger, postpartum chaos, and perimenopause doing whatever perimenopause feels like doing.

And as for my starter, whose name is Holly? She’s still asleep in the freezer — waiting for my second wind… or a personality transplant that turns me into someone who bakes for fun.

With more signal and less noise, Spotting is your weekly lens on what’s next in women’s health and why. See you right here next time, in your inbox (and if a friend sent this your way, hit subscribe!).

With hugs, science & freedom,
Abby

P.S. Whether this hits or misses for you, I’d love to hear your thoughts — just hit reply. Thanks for being here 🤗

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