About

Hi there! My name is Lucy. I’m a microbiome researcher, educator, and passionate scholar of integrative, evidence-based gut health.

If you’re looking for an evidence-based, integrative approach to gut or overall health, you’re in the right place.

Here’s a bit more about me and my story:

I earned my B.A. in biology from Kalamazoo College in 2015, with a concentration in neuroscience and a minor in psychology. During my undergraduate years, I was involved in molecular genetic research studying the evolutionary relationships of the proteins implicated in Alzheimer’s disease. I also had a summer undergraduate research fellowship studying the mechanisms of synaptic plasticity in cell culture.

Lucy Mailing, PhD lab headshot

After struggling with chronic eczema for most of my life, I finally began to examine the role that diet and gut health might be playing in my skin condition in 2013. By gradually identifying foods that were causing inflammation, treating underlying gut pathologies, and nourishing my body with real food, I was able to reverse my eczema and achieve consistently clear skin for the first time in my life.

As a two-sport college athlete, I was delighted by the increased energy, faster workout recovery, and improved mental clarity that my new diet and lifestyle gave me. Six months after overhauling my diet and focusing on gut health, I had the best season of my collegiate soccer career, earning NCAA Division III Academic All-American status and posting the second-best goals against average in Kalamazoo College women’s soccer history.

I quickly became a true believer in the power of diet, lifestyle, and a root-cause approach to treating chronic disease and was amazed to find it was supported by peer-reviewed scientific literature. I spent hours poring through online articles, basic science papers, medical journals, and textbooks. I soon decided that I wanted to study the role of gut health in medicine and change the way people view chronic disease.

In the summer of my senior year, I worked as a research assistant at the University of Chicago in Dr. Cathryn Nagler’s lab, studying the interactions between dietary fiber and the gut microbiota in a mouse model of peanut allergy. This became the basis for my honors thesis and inspired me to pursue a graduate program that would allow me to do research related to the gut microbiota. In 2015, I applied and was accepted to an MD/PhD program at the University of Illinois.

I completed my PhD in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2019, where my graduate research in Dr. Jeffrey Woods’ lab focused on the effects of diet and exercise on the gut microbiome in states of health and disease. I authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and was named an Emerging Leader in Nutritional Sciences by the American Society for Nutrition in 2017.

Lucy Mailing prague IPC19

During my graduate training, I was involved in two seminal studies on exercise and the gut microbiome: the first longitudinal study of aerobic exercise training on the human gut microbiome and the first “exercised” microbiota transplant into germ-free mice. My follow-up analysis on the effects of this transplant on gene expression in the distal colon and brain won me the Young Scientist Award at the International Scientific Conference on Probiotics, Prebiotics, Gut Microbiota, and Health in 2019.

In 2017, I launched this blog! What started as merely a way for me to engage with the scientific literature and make sense of disparate research on short-chain fatty acids quickly grew to reach a substantial audience. I began writing on a wide variety of topics related to gut and skin health and began consulting one-on-one with individuals looking to improve their health.

After defending my dissertation in August 2019, I decided to take a gap year to travel with my husband Steven, consult, and blog full-time before starting medical school. While traveling to Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, I continued to perform research, crowdfunding and coordinating a fully remote clinical trial on the efficacy of the autoimmune protocol diet for eczema and psoriasis, the results of which will be published very soon!

In early 2020, I decided to forgo medical school in favor of a career in independent research, one-on-one health consulting, and science communication.

My goal is to provide helpful, unbiased, evidence-based information on gut health, the microbiome, and nutrition science in a way that empowers you to reverse chronic disease, optimize your health, and live better. I am so grateful to have you here, and hope that you find the free resources here helpful to you!

About

Hi there! My name is Lucy. I’m a microbiome researcher, educator, and passionate scholar of integrative, evidence-based gut health.

If you’re looking for an evidence-based, integrative approach to gut or overall health, you’re in the right place.

Here’s a bit more about me and my story:

I earned my B.A. in biology from Kalamazoo College in 2015, with a concentration in neuroscience and a minor in psychology. During my undergraduate years, I was involved in molecular genetic research studying the evolutionary relationships of the proteins implicated in Alzheimer’s disease. I also had a summer undergraduate research fellowship studying the mechanisms of synaptic plasticity in cell culture.

Lucy Mailing, PhD lab headshot

After struggling with chronic eczema for most of my life, I finally began to examine the role that diet and gut health might be playing in my skin condition in 2013. By gradually identifying foods that were causing inflammation, treating underlying gut pathologies, and nourishing my body with real food, I was able to reverse my eczema and achieve consistently clear skin for the first time in my life.

As a two-sport college athlete, I was delighted by the increased energy, faster workout recovery, and improved mental clarity that my new diet and lifestyle gave me. Six months after overhauling my diet and focusing on gut health, I had the best season of my collegiate soccer career, earning NCAA Division III Academic All-American status and posting the second-best goals against average in Kalamazoo College women’s soccer history.

I quickly became a true believer in the power of diet, lifestyle, and a root-cause approach to treating chronic disease and was amazed to find it was supported by peer-reviewed scientific literature. I spent hours poring through online articles, basic science papers, medical journals, and textbooks. I soon decided that I wanted to study the role of gut health in medicine and change the way people view chronic disease.

In the summer of my senior year, I worked as a research assistant at the University of Chicago in Dr. Cathryn Nagler’s lab, studying the interactions between dietary fiber and the gut microbiota in a mouse model of peanut allergy. This became the basis for my honors thesis and inspired me to pursue a graduate program that would allow me to do research related to the gut microbiota. In 2015, I applied and was accepted to an MD/PhD program at the University of Illinois.

I completed my PhD in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2019, where my graduate research in Dr. Jeffrey Woods’ lab focused on the effects of diet and exercise on the gut microbiome in states of health and disease. I authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and was named an Emerging Leader in Nutritional Sciences by the American Society for Nutrition in 2017.

Lucy Mailing prague IPC19

During my graduate training, I was involved in two seminal studies on exercise and the gut microbiome: the first longitudinal study of aerobic exercise training on the human gut microbiome and the first “exercised” microbiota transplant into germ-free mice. My follow-up analysis on the effects of this transplant on gene expression in the distal colon and brain won me the Young Scientist Award at the International Scientific Conference on Probiotics, Prebiotics, Gut Microbiota, and Health in 2019.

In 2017, I launched this blog! What started as merely a way for me to engage with the scientific literature and make sense of disparate research on short-chain fatty acids quickly grew to reach a substantial audience. I began writing on a wide variety of topics related to gut and skin health and began consulting one-on-one with individuals looking to improve their health.

After defending my dissertation in August 2019, I decided to take a gap year to travel with my husband Steven, consult, and blog full-time before starting medical school. While traveling to Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, I continued to perform research, crowdfunding and coordinating a fully remote clinical trial on the efficacy of the autoimmune protocol diet for eczema and psoriasis, the results of which will be published very soon!

In early 2020, I decided to forgo medical school in favor of a career in independent research, one-on-one health consulting, and science communication.

My goal is to provide helpful, unbiased, evidence-based information on gut health, the microbiome, and nutrition science in a way that empowers you to reverse chronic disease, optimize your health, and live better. I am so grateful to have you here, and hope that you find the free resources here helpful to you!