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The human gut is finally receiving the respect it deserves — and so are its trillions of inhabitants.1 You are, at your core, a microbial being,2 and while microorganisms are found everywhere from your skin to your mouth and even your blood,3 it's your large intestine where your body's largest bacterial ecosystem resides.4
If you treat it and the rest of your microbiome well, good health — both mental and physical — is likely to result. By nourishing this complex microbial community, you can even influence your gut-brain axis, which regulates digestion, mood, immune function and much more.5
The Number of Microbes Living in Your Gut Is Staggering
Your gut is home to bacteria, viruses, fungi, archaea and eukarya. The latter two resemble bacteria but are distinct groups of microorganisms. Bacteria, meanwhile, make up the vast majority of microbes in your microbiome. Three main phyla or groups of gut microbes make up the human microbiome and serve diverse structural, protective and metabolic functions:6
- Bacteroidetes — Porphyromonas, Prevotella and Bacteroides
- Firmicutes — Ruminococcus, Clostridium, Lactobacillus and Eubacteria
- Actinobacteria — Bifidobacteria (the most prevalent type)
Broken down, the average person may host the following quantities of bacteria in different body regions.7 Remember that this is just an average — your age, health status, diet and environment all influence the numbers and diversity of microorganisms in your gut.8
Your Gut-Brain Axis Is an Information Highway
Gut microbes' effects don't only apply to your gastrointestinal tract. They interact with your central nervous system via the microbiota-gut-brain axis, a two-way information highway that involves neural, immune, endocrine and metabolic pathways.24 By promoting proinflammatory cytokines, bacteria may also play a role in damaging the integrity of the microbiota-gut-brain axis and the blood-brain barrier.25
There are also 10 gut microbiota genera with a significant link to Alzheimer's. Six are negatively associated with Alzheimer's, meaning they're less common in people with Alzheimer's than in those without the disease and may therefore have a protective effect.
The remaining four are positively associated with Alzheimer's, meaning they're more abundant in those with Alzheimer's disease, making them a risk factor for the condition. Specifically:26
- Bacteria protective against Alzheimer's include Firmicutes phylum (Eubacterium nodatum group, Eisenbergiella and Eubacterium fissicatena group) as well as from Actinobacteria (Adlercreutzia, Gordonibacter) and Bacteroidetes (Prevotella 9)
- Bacteria associated with Alzheimer's include Firmicutes (Lachnospira and Veillonella), Actinobacteria (Collinsella) and Bacteroidetes (Bacteroides)
What's Hurting Your Microbial Health?
Researchers are only beginning to tap the surface when it comes to unveiling the complex relationship microbes have with human health and disease. But it's known that microbial diversity in your gut is a good thing, while decreased diversity in the gut microbiome has been linked to chronic conditions such as obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
In general, gut microbial diversity decreases with age,27 but even younger people are being affected. The overuse of antibiotics, elective C-sections and processed foods have been described as primary factors "driving the destruction of our inner ecology."28 C-section delivery is associated with an increased risk of immune system and metabolic disorders, possibly due to altered microbes.29
Dramatic increases in chronic diseases, including Type 1 diabetes, asthma, obesity, gastroesophageal reflux disease and inflammatory bowel disease, are also linked to the loss of bacterial diversity in our guts — caused by the overuse of antibiotics.30 Consumption of whole foods, meanwhile, is linked to higher gut microbiota diversity,31 as is consuming herbs and spices, for instance.32
But processed foods, which are devoid of fiber needed to feed a healthy microbiome, contain chemicals such as the herbicide glyphosate that also disrupt microbes.33 From EMFs and air pollution34 to antibacterial soap, your microbiome is under constant assault from the world around you.
How to Optimize Your Gut Microbiome
Avoiding antibiotics, including those found in conventionally raised meat, is key to keeping your microbiome health intact. Ultraprocessed foods, artificial sweeteners, chlorinated and fluoridated water, elective C-sections and antibacterial products are other culprits that can worsen your microbial health.
A healthy gut microbiome depends on the consumption of fermented foods. A study assigned 36 adults to consume a diet high in fermented foods or high-fiber foods for 10 weeks. Those consuming fermented foods had an increase in microbiome diversity as well as decreases in markers of inflammation.35
If you do take antibiotics or are looking for another supportive measure for gut health, consider spore-based probiotics, or sporebiotics. These are part of a group of derivatives of the Bacillus microbe and have been shown to dramatically increase your immune tolerance.
Spore-based probiotics do not contain any live Bacillus strains, only its spores — the cell wall or protective shell around the DNA and the working mechanism of that DNA. As such, they are not affected by antibiotics and may be able to reestablish your gut microbiome more effectively when taken in conjunction with the antibiotic.
In your gut, the Bacillus species also convert sugar into vitamin C, a nutrient well-known for its anti-infectious effects and, according to Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, a long-time mentor of mine, sporebiotics also massively increase reproduction of acidophilus, bifidus and other beneficial microbes in your gut via the electromagnetic messages they send out.
This is entirely unique. When you take a regular probiotic, they primarily take care of themselves. Bacillus spores, on the other hand, enhance many other beneficial microbes. Bacillus spores also create 24 different substances that have strong antimicrobial properties. But they do not kill indiscriminately the way antibiotics do. As noted by Klinghardt:
"Seeding the gut with things that make it stronger, more resilient towards the offenses we present to it is a huge key to our time. We need to live through this insane time, and we need to use all the tools that give us more resilience, which is for me like a holy war.
Resilience means immune tolerance — tolerating the stresses of our time, and any tool that does it, that is healthy, that doesn't have side effects, is important to have in our tool chest. [Sporebiotics] is one of the major ones."
- 1 Nutr Rev. 2012 Aug; 70(Suppl 1): S38–S44., Intro
- 2 Bitchute, Microbiome and the Immune System, Interview With Rodney Dietert, Ph.D. January 22, 2021
- 3 Int J Mol Sci. 2023 Mar; 24(6): 5633
- 4, 5, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 20, 21 Visual Capitalist, What Lives in Your Gut Microbiome?
- 6 Nutrients 2019 Feb; 11(2): 258, 2. Gut Microbiota Composition and Function
- 9 Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol., 01 March 2019. doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2019.00039
- 10 Scientific Reports volume 10, Article number: 5254 (2020)
- 11 Front Biosci (Elite Ed). 2023 Oct 16;15(4):23. doi: 10.31083/j.fbe1504023
- 12 Appl Microbiol Biotechnol. 2023; 107(2-3): 517–534., Pseudomonadota: From the oral cavity to the gut microbiome
- 16, 17 Microorganisms 2022, 10(2)
- 18 Brain, Behavior and Immunity January 2024; 115: 458-469, Introduction
- 19 Brain, Behavior and Immunity January 2024; 115: 458-469
- 22, 23 Nutrients 2019 Feb; 11(2): 258, 4. Gut Microbiota Strains and Obesity
- 24, 26 Scientific Reports March 31, 2023
- 25 Scientific Reports March 31, 2023, Introduction
- 27 Aging (Albany NY). 2019 Jan 31; 11(2): 289–290
- 28, 29 The Invisible Extinction, Synopsis
- 30 Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine December 2018, 85 (12) 928-930
- 31 Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2019, 20(8), 1835
- 32 The Journal of Nutrition, Volume 152, Issue 11, November 2022, Pages 2461–2470, doi: 10.1093/jn/nxac201, Intro (Archived)
- 33 Substack, 'Toxic Legacy' — How Glyphosate Destroys Your Health June 27, 2021
- 34 Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Dec; 19(23): 15494
- 35 Cell July 12, 2021
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