Trillions of bacterias live in our gut. When your gut microbiome is diverse & balanced, they help you upkeep your health. Gut microbiome is an ecosystem of microbes that live in your colon. They have a direct influence on yourall health.
There are billions & trillions of microbes on & inside our bodies. Gut bacteria plays a pivotal role in protecting us from a number of diseases, digesting fibres & producing vitamins. As such, the gut plays an important role in boosting metabolism.
The following paragraphs discusses why maintaining & taking care of your gut microbiome is essential:
- Protection from chronic diseases: People suffering from life threatening diseases such as obesity, thyroid, diabetes & coronary heart disease have different bacteria composition in their gut. People with the same diseases have the same microbiome/bacteria composition. For example, people suffering from type 2 diabetes have lower levels of Akkermansia, Haemophilus, Lactobacillus, and Paraprevotella. Your gut bacteria can help you prevent major chronic diseases-Crohn’s disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity & coronary heart disease. Given that people having the same specific disease share key microbiome features, it is possible to compare your microbiome profile with specific traits for each disease. This can help you learn if your gut bacteria protects you from the above mentioned chronic diseases. The more similarity between the profiles, lower protection against these diseases. If a person’s gut microbiome composition shares key features with the microbiome profile of a person with a disease, it tells you that your gut flora is not balanced & you need to take corrective action.
- Populate your diet with correct prebiotics & probiotics: Probiotics are bacterias that can improve human health through their activities in the body. Some of the important probiotics include: Lactobacilli, Saccharomyces boulardii, and Bacillus coagulans. Probiotics support digestion by synthesising vitamins & other beneficial substances. They protect against chronic inflammation & strengthen our immune system.It is important to understand & learn the level of probiotics & other beneficial bacteria in your gut microbiome to make supplementary & dietary interventions.
- Overcome digestion related issues: Your gut is involved in various processes including the digestion process. Imbalance gut bacteria can cause discomfort, gas, bloating, diarrhea & constipation. Gut imbalances & leaky gut have a prominent role to play in a lot of digestive related issues such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome(IBS). IBS is characterised by chronic inflammation further exacerbated by stress, poor diet, inadequate sleep & leaky gut. Symptoms can vary from person to person from diarrhea, constipation to mix of both. A specific type of gut bacteria may contribute to IBS-constipation type. Besides, IBS-diarrhea & IBS-mixed types have low levels of methane producing bacteria in their gut. These forms of discomfort also have a low population of microbes that produces butyrate.Butyrate is a short chain fatty acid that provides around 90% of fuel to cells of the gut lining. It also plays an important role in low inflammation.
Inflammatory Bowel Disease(IBD) is an autoimmune condition wherein your body’s immune system reacts abnormally to different triggers – poor diet, stress, alcohol consumption etc. Two types of IBD are Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis that causes acute & chronic inflammation to form lesions around gut lining. This is the reason lesions can lead to wounds which result in bloody stools. Crohn disease can impact any part of the digestive tract. Lesions can appear anywhere from mouth to ractum. Ulcerative colitis generally occur in large intestine, home to your gut & also in the area where poop is formed
- Impact of antibiotics on your gut bacteria: We have discussed briefly about the role of antibiotics in our earlier blog . Antibiotics are of two types -broad spectrum & narrow spectrum. Broad spectrum antibiotics impact different types of bacterias- both good & bad. On the other hand, narrow spectrum impacts some specific strains. Most medical practitioners recommend broad spectrum antibiotics when they are not able to figure out /identify the bacteria at the root of the problem. However as discussed in our earlier blog, antibiotics medication can reduce your gut microbiome diversity & it takes time for you to recover. It is also important to note that antibiotics impact differently on gut microbiomes depending upon how they enter the body. How a microbiome reacts to antibiotics depends upon various factors such as age, lifestyle, gender & composition of gut bacteria.
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