When we think of bacteria, the first thing that often comes to mind is germs, those tiny invisible organisms that invade our bodies and make us sick. But the truth is that bacteria not only live within us all, they also help our bodies do amazing things, such as aid in digestion, produce vitamins and play a role in the immune system.
More and more, scientists have been exploring what’s called the microbiome, the collection of life inside the human body. Researchers around the globe are trying to understand the roles it plays and its impact on human health. The buzz term you might have heard more recently is gut bacteria. There are scores of diets and even supplements that claim to fix one’s gut. Have you heard of the Paleo diet, the one in which you eat as the cavemen did? It’s supposed to improve gut health.
Healing the gut, according to the vast amounts of gutrelated literature out there, can help one lose body fat, build muscle, avoid chronic disease, relieve autoimmune-related issues and even address conditions such as depression, anxiety and Alzheimer’s disease.
Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? But it’s really not, and sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s true and what isn’t. So let’s start with a quick lesson in microbiology.
Humans have clusters of bacteria in different parts of the body, such as in the skin, the mouth and the vagina. Gut microbiota is the microbe population living inside our intestines. Inside the gut—the part of our digestive system where food goes after it is eaten to be broken down into nutrients and waste—are at least 1,000 different species of bacteria. Those 1,000 different species are made up of tens of trillions of microorganisms with more than 3 million genes. That’s 150 times more than human genes. About a third of gut microbiota is common to most people, while two-thirds are specific to the individual.
Basically, your gut is like a fingerprint that begins at birth. Babies are believed to be bacteria-free until they’re born, when they are quickly introduced to bacteria from their mothers. By about age one, their gut bacteria is welldeveloped. Diseases exist because of a disturbance within that gut ecosystem.
“It’s a very complex ecosystem,” says Mark Forsyth, a biology professor at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va. “We’re only now developing tools to look at the complexity of that ecosystem.”
Part of the challenge in studying the true nature of the microbiota, however, is that many of the bacteria can’t be cultivated in a lab and can be studied only by looking at DNA sequencing. But continuous improvements in research techniques are making the process easier, Forsyth says. “The cost of this kind of sequencing is coming down, so it’s allowing researchers to use more techniques to study this,” he says. “Before, they couldn’t afford to do microbiome studies.”
Newer studies have discovered a lot. One study performed by researchers at the Mayo Clinic found a direct link between specific bacteria in the gut and rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
The study found that people with RA had lower microbial diversity in their gut, and theorized that the imbalance could be addressed by using probiotics—supplements that introduce live, “helpful” bacteria into the body to improve gut health.
The researchers found that treating RA with medication helped increase the diversity of the micro-bacteria species, leading them to speculate that treatment leads to restoring a more normal state of the microbiome.
Probiotics, which are touted in a number of diets out there, do help to a degree, Forsyth says, but the microbes within them don’t exist for long in the intestinal tract, so they have to be taken long term. But some studies have shown a positive effect, he says.
A study done at William & Mary in 2015 found that young adults who eat fermented foods that contain probiotics, such as yogurt, kefir, pickles, sauerkraut and kimchi, have fewer social anxiety symptoms.
“Ultimately, the best future for probiotics would be being able to identify microbes that are missing in a patient and be able to reproduce them in a person,” Forsyth says.
Probiotics are often recommended when a person is taking antibiotics to treat an illness. While antibiotics kill harmful bacteria, they kill good kinds as well. Probiotics help put the good ones back. Still, treating people with antibiotics changes the amount and type of microbes in the gut, and sometimes they kill off bacteria that help keep other types of bacteria in check. Once the balance is messed up, it can lead to more problems. Thus is the challenge of treating a stubborn bacterium such as Clostridium difficle, or C. diff.
Studies have shown promise in using the micro biome to treat C. diff by using someone else’s microbiome. Fecal transplants, which are exactly what they sound like, try to fix a damaged microbiome by infusing it with a helpful one.
Researchers say this type of therapy could theoretically work in treating other diseases as well. But there is still much work to be done.
“The problem with getting too enthusiastic about the microbiome isn’t much different from the problem with getting too enthusiastic about any research advances,” writes Aaron E. Carroll, a professor of pediatrics at Indiana University of Medicine, in the New York Times. “Many mistake correlation for causation; just because some people have a different microbiome doesn’t mean that microbes are responsible for other differences.”
As of yet, there’s no easy fix out there for gut bacteria, although having good nutrition is clearly seen as beneficial.
A study done last year in the United Kingdom found that following a diet high in fruits and vegetables prevented the growth of some disease-causing bacteria.
Researchers also need to truly figure out what a properly functioning microbiota would look like, and whether there will ever be a way to treat a specific bacteria.
“I don’t know, honestly, how possible that is,” Forsyth says. “I think it would almost be the Holy Grail.”
10 Science-Based Ways to Improve Your Gut bacteria:
1 Eat a diverse range of foods. Each species of bacteria in your intestines plays a different role in your health. A diet consisting of different types of food can lead to a diverse microbiota, which is considered to be a healthy one.
2 Eat lots of vegetables, legumes, beans and fruit. These foods are high in fiber, which can’t be digested by your body, but can be digested by bacteria in your gut. Some foods especially high in fiber are raspberries, artichokes, green peas, broccoli, chickpeas, lentils, beans and whole grains.
3 Eat fermented foods. Fermented foods are foods altered by microbes, such as yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut and kefir. People who eat a lot of yogurt have fewer of a type of bacteria associated with inflammation and some chronic diseases. Plain, natural yogurt is best, and watch the sugar.
4 Don’t eat too many artificial sweeteners. They may negatively affect blood sugar levels and gut microbiota.
5 Eat prebiotic foods. These are foods that promote the growth of beneficial microbes in the gut. These are mainly fiber or complex carbs that can’t be digested by the body, but certain species of bacteria break them down and use them for fuel.
6 Breastfeed for at least six months. A child’s microbiota develops during the first two years of life. Those who are breastfed seem to have more of a kind of bacteria associated with lower rates of allergies, obesity and other diseases.
7 Eat whole grains. These contain fiber and non-digestible carbs that are broken down by microbiota in the large intestine and promote the growth of certain beneficial bacteria.
8 Eat a plant-based diet. Studies have shown that vegetarian diets may benefit the gut because of higher fiber contents.
9 Eat foods rich in polyphenols. These are plant compounds believed to have health benefits, including reductions in blood pressure, inflammation, cholesterol and oxidative stress. They are usually digested by gut bacteria in the colon. Good sources of polyphenols are cocoa, dark chocolate, grapes, green tea, almonds, onions, blueberries and broccoli.
10 Take a probiotic supplement. Probiotics may benefit your health by changing the overall composition of the microbiota, and may improve the gut microbiota in certain diseases.
Source: Authority Nutrition
