Giulia Enders urges listening to organs, not ignoring them

listen to – In Organ Speak, Giulia Enders—best known for Gut—casts organs as active partners in everyday health, walking readers through lungs, the immune system, skin, muscles and the brain. The book blends scientific research with personal storytelling, offering practic

The next time you feel your day slipping away—into work emails, evening TV and the small frictions of being human—Giulia Enders wants you to look inward instead of outward.

Her new book. Organ Speak: What it really means to listen to our bodies. argues that a compelling story is unfolding in parallel. second by second. inside “the squishy bodies doing all that living.” In a voice that mixes a doctor’s clarity with an author’s enthusiasm (and sometimes a dose of humour). Enders pushes readers to treat the body’s systems as finely tuned machinery shaped over “millennia of human evolution.” The payoff. she suggests. is not just healthier choices. but a more harmonious way of living.

Enders is a medical doctor and a researcher specialising in the digestive system. She is also the author of Gut. a bestselling book focused on the intestines—covering. among other topics. what happens when we fart and what the best position is for defecating. Organ Speak is built with a similar structure: Enders dedicates a chapter to each organ or system—lungs. immune system. skin. muscles and. last but not least. the brain—drawing on the latest scientific research while weaving in stories from her personal life.

The book doesn’t just describe how organs work. It makes a bigger promise: organs. Enders argues. have “a substantial say in what it means to be ourselves.” She frames that influence through questions like “what do we really need?”. “How do we deal with threats?”. and “How do we want to treat each other?” Her conclusion is that if people can better understand the answers coming from their bodies. they could “lead a more harmonious life.”.

She starts with the lungs. Enders describes them as “soft and flexible balloons” in the chest that take on the shape of the ribs. heart and oesophagus as they inflate and shrink some 20. 000 times a day. That delicacy. she says. helps them make the most of the air we inhale—air that is almost never at the perfect temperature or humidity for the lungs. and often carries damaging particles such as dirt or pollutants.

From there, she turns to habits that sound almost absurd until they show up in daily life. One is “email apnoea,” where people hold their breath as they open their inboxes. Another is excessive mouth breathing. Both, Enders writes, can lead to tiredness, neck tension and shortness of breath. Her solutions are practical: exercises where people briefly hold their breath after exhaling to soothe the nervous system.

The immune system follows, and the tone stays playful even as the content gets serious. Enders explains how the immune system protects against bacteria and viruses. and why catching an infection can make you feel so ill. She describes a runny nose as “nose diarrhoea,” arguing—much like diarrhoea—that it helps flush out pathogens.

She then outlines how allergies and autoimmune conditions happen when the immune system mistakes a harmless substance for a threat. In her telling, it can be anything from peanut protein to healthy tissue. That misfire, she says, triggers the release of inflammatory molecules that produce symptoms such as rashes or painful joints.

There’s also a more conventional prevention message. Enders says there are ways to help keep immune cells happy: sleep, eat and exercise well, and get vaccinated. Vaccination. she writes. helps protect against viral infections such as flu or covid-19. which she says can impair the immune system for weeks or even months after the virus has gone. through what is known as post-viral syndrome.

When she moves to skin, Enders “peels back” its layers and links everyday experiences to long-term outcomes. She explains why wrinkles form and the benefits of being touched. In pre-term babies. she writes. skin contact in early life may improve sleep. cognitive development and resistance to stress years later. For adults, she says, skin contact seems to lower blood pressure, reduce anxiety and can even bring pain relief.

On slowing skin ageing. her recommendations also come down to specific product types and timing: moisturising creams containing vitamin C in the evenings. and vitamin A-infused moisturisers—combined with sunscreen—in the mornings. Enders’ rationale is chemistry with consequences. Vitamin C degrades in sunlight, while vitamin A, in the absence of sunscreen, can generate radicals in sunlight.

Muscles get a different kind of demonstration. Enders covers what she calls a medium to less well-known set of facts. including what would happen if someone could stay in bed for a fortnight without moving at all. The body would lose a tenth of its muscle mass—an amount she says is similar to the loss that occurs over 30 years of normal ageing.

She also lays out the evidence for exercising: reduced anxiety, a stronger heart and new brain cells. How muscles respond, she writes, depends partly on genetics. Some people are better suited to long-distance running, while others are built to excel at strength training. Rather than comparing athletic prowess with other people’s. she says you’re better off finding the kind of workout that fits your body—and that you’ll probably enjoy more.

The final chapter returns to the brain, where sleep deprivation and substance addictions are at the centre of the discussion. Enders offers tips for sleeping better: avoid bright lights or caffeine before bed, and don’t bother with melatonin because most people won’t benefit much from the hormone.

As a whole. Organ Speak may not deliver many health tips New Scientist readers haven’t heard before. and the book’s broader claims don’t land equally for everyone. Some passages are hard to read for the reviewer behind the original assessment. especially where Enders speaks of organs as wise gurus from which we can learn deep life lessons. The reviewer points to the idea that thinking of the skin will help people cope better with grief or heartbreak. calling it something they don’t believe would actually work.

The critique also extends to pacing and structure. The lung chapter, the reviewer says, goes into the evolution of Earth’s air, which they describe as a detour that might have been more engaging if Enders had focused more narrowly on the lungs themselves.

Still, the review closes on a cautious endorsement: despite the tonal oddities and detours, Organ Speak is described as worth picking up for anyone curious about inner workings—and perhaps the sort of reminder that makes you treat your body a bit more carefully.

And for a lot of people, that reminder might arrive at the most familiar moment: right as the day’s more worrying emails hit refresh—when the author’s call to “take better care” feels less like a lesson and more like a request to pay attention to what’s already been working quietly inside you.

Giulia Enders Organ Speak human organs lungs immune system skin muscles brain sleep deprivation vaccinations vitamin C vitamin A sunscreen melatonin