Aucklander Nik McIntosh, 35, underwent two surgeries for bowel cancer at the age of 17. Now, he's founded his own supplement brand for gut health. Photo / Supplied
Nik McIntosh was diagnosed with bowel cancer at the age of 17. Young as he was, it wasn’t exactly a shock.
He remembers having symptoms from around the age of 8, due to a genetic mutation called familial adenomatous polyposis.
“That basically created a pathway [to] inevitably developing
“At such a young age, they didn’t know whether the best thing to do was to slice me open then and deal with it or to wait, because they didn’t really understand exactly what the implications would be.”
It wasn’t clear whether puberty would speed or slow the growth of a cancer. McIntosh’s surgeon decided it would be better to wait for him to grow, and for advances in technology that could improve his prognosis.
“That gave me nine years of basically living with effectively a ticking time bomb.”
His case is a rare one. Others with the same genetic mutation don’t typically present symptoms until their 40s.
He finally had an operation called a J pouch, around six months before his 18th birthday.
“When they did operate and basically chop my large intestine out of my body – the first surgery for that was about 10 or 11 hours – when they biopsied it, there were two tumours growing on the wall of my gut at that point in time."
If the cancer got through the gut, it would have spread elsewhere in his body.
“They take your small intestine, turn it back on itself, slice down it, and sew it back together, which basically doubles the diameter of it and then that reconnects you back up,” he explains.
While he healed, McIntosh had an ileostomy bag.
“I had a hole in the side of my body with my small intestine poking out ... that was basically the next four months, just to get that reconnection to heal up.”
A second, three-hour operation followed to “put it all back together”.
As a teenager, recovering from two major operations was “isolating”, he says.
“All the stuff that people are doing at that age, alcohol, going out drinking – that all has a massive impact on your gut. [With] my situation on top of that, it gets incredibly challenging.
“When I was 18, 19, that was the social life. Now, I think people are a lot more aware and probably doing a lot better in terms of not relying purely on alcohol to have a social life.”
Maintaining his health amid his cancer recovery was challenging.
“The first thing that happens is that your diet’s just completely flipped on its head. All the stuff that’s good for everybody – all your good, healthy fibres and vegetables and everything else – you have to cut all of that stuff out of your diet.
“The large intestine’s basically where all of that stuff gets fermented and broken down, and you lose that part of your process ... your body’s ability to break down all that fibrous material and everything else basically disappears.”
His body became “a science experiment”, he says. “You’ve got to figure out how to get the nutrition in your body while avoiding all the things your body can no longer digest.”
Five years after the procedure, McIntosh got the all clear, but that “doesn’t mean it won’t happen again”.
“We are still monitoring today, so basically it will never stop. That’s going to be the rest of my life.”
He’s spent the past 15 years experimenting with his diet to see how he can handle certain foods and nutrients, not wanting to rely solely on medical solutions.
“Because I can’t physically eat a bunch of stuff, that turns you towards different forms of supplementation ... I’ve had to rely on supplementation pretty heavily over time.
“For me personally, it’s obviously much broader than gut health, but gut health is the cornerstone of everything. If my gut’s off a little bit, then I could be in bed for most of the day.”
McIntosh went on to become a plumber and gasfitter by trade, followed by several years at engineering consultancy Beca. He then created Trade Lab, an online education platform for tradespeople, and Tame, a men’s grooming e-commerce business.
Now, his trial-and-error approach to looking after his health has led him to create supplement brand The Science Of. The first product, The Science Of: Gut Health, is a powder formula that McIntosh says has been rigorously tested.
There are countless supplements on the market in New Zealand, and he’s well aware that the scientific claims behind some of them can be “pretty weak”.
“Even when people say stuff is clinically backed, you’ve got to look at the clinical research,” he says.
“And sometimes the clinical research is basically, ‘We gave this person this thing and they didn’t get sick’ – but the research is not on the benefit they’re claiming it provides.
“So, through this process, we want to make sure that where there are claims specifically around clinical backing, we can put a hand across the heart and say this thing is clinically backed in the specific area that we’re saying should be benefiting people.
“We’ve gone through thorough processes with lawyers that operate specifically in that space to make sure that any of the claims that we are making are backed by enough research.”
With The Science Of, he plans to expand into other areas of health from sleep and immune support to performance and recovery.
Following his ordeal as a teenager, McIntosh has had to be vigilant when it comes to looking after his health – and he wants Kiwis to do the same.
“[Bowel cancer] is something that’s on the rise, it’s obviously pretty closely linked to diet and what you’re putting through your body, even fibre intake and how little people are getting from processed foods,” he says.
“There’s a bunch of screening measures in place now. Go and get screened and don’t be afraid, because the impact that it’s going to have on your life and your quality of life is not worth it.
“Don’t be too proud to get screened.”