Dr. Robynne Chutkan has spent her career not just defying convention, but interrogating it. While her peers in the gastroenterology field write prescriptions the average patient can barely make out, the four-time author has penned four easy-to-understand books that not only democratize information for the layman, but detail actionable steps and questions to ask your doctor. “I have a fancy medical practice, and it’s fairly limited as to who can see me,” Chutkan explains, describing the contents of her latest book, The Anti-Viral Gut: Tackling Pathogens from the Inside Out, “but, I can put information out there for the price of a book.”
Jamaican Roots
Chutkan credits this emphasis on approachability to her family. Throughout our interview, she ties together the importance of her familial foundation, her Jamaican roots, and how they helped her escape the gravitational pull of colonialism with her professional success. Chutkan is Afro-Indian and like many Jamaicans of African descent, her roots become impossible to trace past the horrific Middle Passage. Still, she has great reverence for her familial legacy, of which she doesn’t simply cling to, but drapes around herself with pride.
The doctor spent most of her childhood split between Kingston and her grandfather’s farm just outside of Spanish Town, St. Catherine. “Running around the sugarcane fields, swimming in the canal in the viaduct, riding on the tractor with my grandfather – I lived a very close to the ground life,” she reminisces. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but really what I was doing was exposing my body to soil microbes, and building strength and immunity.” This realization became one of Chutkan’s guiding mantras in her life and work, “live dirty and eat clean.” She advocates for a closer relationship with nature and a move away from processed foods.
She remembers a bamboo pole on her grandfather’s farm. On top of it was this red flag, or a Jhandi flag, that let travelers know that this was a spot they could rest, get a drink of water, or a plate of food. She also remembers trailing behind her father in the city. By this point, he had established himself, against all odds as a boy born and raised on a plantation, as one of Jamaica’s first orthopedic surgeons. Former patients would stop him to shake his hand, hug him, and thank him for changing their lives. Chutkan fell in love with the idea of helping people. “When you help someone with their health, it’s different from making them rich. Those things are important, but your health affects every aspect of your life. You can be wealthy and have a fantastic house, but if you’re unhealthy, you can’t enjoy that.”
It seems Chutkan was destined for a career in medicine. She received her bachelor’s degree from Yale University before earning her medical degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Like many who emigrated from Jamaica, attending Yale came with growing pains. At the time she attended there was little diversity on campus, and she was the only person of color on the squash team. Moreover, she was not used to thinking racially. “In Jamaica, I had friends from all over,” she explains. “I had friends who were mixed like me, friends who were Chinese, Lebanese, Black. I was struck here that people needed to know who you were, ‘what’ you were, and felt this need to categorize you.”
Facing Challenges
Chutkan is sure this would have affected her more if she was not lucky to be raised in Jamaica. “If you already feel limited and put down, it’s harder to ascend to something,” she reasons. “I grew up in a country where a lot of the people in charge looked like me. I say that not just about race, but also in terms of gender. I grew up with women doing really important things, including my mom.” Her mother was many things – she attended law school, taught at the College of Arts, Science and Technology (now known as UTECH), and represented Jamaica in squash, tennis, dance, and bridge. She vividly remembers beaming, watching her mother soar across the stage. She hopes to be a similar figure for her daughter as she is preparing for the college application process.
Medical school was competitive, but Chutkan thrived nevertheless, holding on to those same principles of empowerment and confidence. “I feel like I bring value. I don’t mean that in a conceited way. I’m going to bring value, I’m going to work hard, I’m going to represent your institution well,” she says. She completed her residency at Columbia and became the first chief resident of color in 1995, a fact she only realized last year when it was pointed out to her on a reunion Zoom call.
Paving Her Own Path
After completing her training at Mt. Sinai, Chutkan moved to Washington DC in 1997, partly to be closer to her two siblings who are also powerhouses in their fields. There, Chutkan would become the first woman to work at Georgetown University’s gastro facility. The first few years were very academic – publishing papers and being on the board of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE) – a far cry from her memory of watching her father be embraced by former patients. Chutkan wanted to break the mold of what was expected from a gastroenterologist. “The kind of medicine I wanted to provide was more comprehensive and innovative than what was available in a hospital setting,” she explains. “I wanted to talk to people about the food they were eating. It seemed odd to me to be talking about digestive health and not to be talking about what we were digesting.”
To the layman that might seem odd. How could one talk about gut health without talking about what goes into the gut? According to Chutkan, the medical education sphere held a fixed lens on the topic. It focused more on treatments, operations and pills. “I was in pursuit of the why. If you could title my career, it would be In Pursuit of the Why,” she jokes. In that pursuit, she struck out on her own, starting her own private practice, the Digestive Center for Wellness, an integrative gastroenterology practice dedicated to uncovering the root cause of GI disorders. She began incorporating innovative treatment methods, including nutritional therapy, microbial optimization, and mind-body techniques. Her commitment to approachability has made her an ideal contributor to many outlets and programs, with the Today show, The Megyn Kelly Show, the New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post all making use of her talents.
Her Latest Book
Her new book, The Anti-Viral Gut, is her latest attempt to bridge the gap between medical jargon and plain English, while also presenting cost-effective practices that can make a difference in the lives of those suffering from various gut-related illnesses before necessitating a visit to a specialist. The book dives into a variety of topics all in an attempt to strengthen your gut-immune system. The text includes step-by-step recipe plans, guidance on practicing mindfulness and stress reduction, and how to improve sleep hygiene. Chutkan’s website is an excellent companion piece to the book, doling out pages of free information on a variety of gut-related topics.
Her books are built on decades of learning and inspiration that start from her grandfather. Ultimately, Dr. Robynne Chutkan puts it best, “My goal with the books is to educate people about gut health so they don’t need me. If I do my job with these books, you don’t need to come see me, because you got it.”
