Research Overview
The healthy gut communicates with the brain and lives in harmony with the many bacteria it contains. Disorders of gut health lead to diabetes and metabolic disease, inadequate nutrition, pain, chronic nausea, poor digestion and liver disease. Major digestive diseases include inflammatory bowel disease, gastroparesis, chronic constipation and the irritable bowel syndrome.

The gut is controlled through an extensive nervous system, the enteric nervous system (ENS), embedded in the gut wall, connections with the central nervous system (CNS) and through gut hormones. We are intensely interested in these control systems and how they are involved in disordered states, including inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes, obesity, constipation and gastroparesis.