I have what in my gut?!

Did you know that you co-exist with trillions of microbes? Many of whom reside in your gut? 

We are family.

The microbiome of the gut consist mostly of bacteria but also include viruses, parasites and fungi. These living microorganisms provide us with the ability to absorb and digest nutrients and create energy from our food. They also help us to synthesize vitamins, proteins and metabolites essential for life. They help maintain gut barrier function and protect against potential pathogens. 

There are more of them than us!

 There are roughly 10x more of them than us. They contribute quite a bit more DNA to our bodies than we do. Up to half of the molecules circulating in our blood, including vitamins, hormones and mood influencing neurotransmitters, are produced by these microbes. 

We are symbiotic and synergistic.

 We return the favor by providing a place for them to live and food to eat. Different microbes take up real estate in different parts of the gut depending upon their raison d’etre. We, then, dutifully feed them the fiber we ingest in fruits, vegetables and healthy grains that we cannot digest. It’s a win-win for everyone.

How did they get there you might ask?

 The microbiome in the gut begins to form, in earnest, at birth. The status of your birth mother’s gut microbiome impacts what transfers to you. Was her microbiome diverse and robust? Whether you were born vaginally or via a C-section influences the type of microbes that set up shop. Whether you were breast fed or bottle fed will also influence this early colonization. 

They help us survey our world.

 As our life unfolds, the health of this evolving planetary ecosystem depends mainly on lifestyle and environment. Genetics play a role but a much smaller one than we realize. Our lifestyle such as diet, nutritional status, stress resilience and environmental exposures rule this roost. Our choices matter significantly.

We can argue that our modern society has “erased” many of these necessary partners in crime by over sanitizing ourselves and our environment. While a certain level of exposure to these microbes optimizes our health and wellness and creates balance, there is a sweet spot. It’s only when something tips us into an imbalance that illness follows.

Where the magic happens…

Gut microbes not only influence our gut health but our metabolic health including blood sugar regulation and insulin sensitivity. They impact hormone balance including mood stabilizing neurotransmitters. They have a large say in our weight. They influence our immune system and have a hand in whether or not we get sick often, have allergies, develop autoimmune illness, heart disease and even cancer.  We still have much to learn about the extent of their influence.

This might be big news to you and likely your conventional health care providers. Most are not aware of their importance and even more astoundingly, how it impacts your health. Sure, they can check for overt or obvious infections but that is quite limiting. Just because you test “positive” or “negative” for something doesn’t give you the full picture.

We also know by now that what happens in the gut doesn’t stay in the gut. So, to compartmentalize signs and symptoms would do a disservice to your overall health and wellness. I love a good smoking gun just as much as the next person but that’s not how our ingenious network system works most of the time.  More often, illness is multifactorial and certain conditions have been established within our network system, most due to lifestyle choices, which make illness or dis-ease more likely.

A diverse, robust and balanced gut microbiome is necessary for optimal health. These bacteria include firmicutes and bacteroidetes phyla among many more. It’s not enough to know that our microbiome is optimal when it is robust and diverse. It’s equally important to understand just what these microbes bring to the table in the form of digestion and gut health.

They are integral to controlling inflammation as ⅔ of our immune system sits in our gut. If our gut barrier cells are inflamed, our vagus nerve or main character in our enteric nervous system is also inflamed and significantly affects our gut-brain communication. 

They determine what we absorb and digest via our digestion cascade.  It is an intricate dance that must be given its due respect. If we do not have a healthy gut microbiome, we will not be able to lean on it for all of the essential functions it provides which brings us health and wellness. 

It’s all about balance in the gut. Optimal gut health depends on a robust and diverse gut microbiome population. The microbiome in the gut is like a garden. After our initial colonization in infancy and childhood, we plant the seeds for what grows with our lifestyle choices. Ideally, we then care for and tend to our garden by eating whole foods that are nutrient dense, engaging in effective stress management, prioritizing sleep in order to maximize its chances of being healthy and vibrant. 

This way, if an unwanted microbe gets in the garden, our first responder microbes and gut barrier can nip it in the bud. An example of this might be H. pylori, a pathogenic bacteria, which can be found on fruits and vegetables. If our gut is in good shape and experiencing health and wellness, we can usually fend off its ill effects with optimal stomach acid and other beneficial microbes. If our gut microbiome is imbalanced and the integrity of our gut barrier is impaired, we are not going to fare as well and negative downstream effects will become evident such as indigestion and bloating, decreased stomach acid production and nutrient deficiencies. Extra-gastrointestinal signs and symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, anxiety may ensue. H. pylori can even trigger autoimmune thyroiditis in certain people.

The beauty of this is that we hold the power to heal our microbiome in the gut.

Our lifestyle choices can create a healthy gut microbiome or an imbalanced one. You hold the key. When you truly know that your actions determine your health, health and wellness become attainable. Isn’t that liberating?

First up is your diet and what you choose to eat. If you are like most people in the US, you are not eating a diet that is nourishing you. This co-opting of our health by foods that do not truly nourish us has been insidious for some of us and for others; the only way of eating that we have ever known.

The Standard American Diet is full of highly manipulated, pro-inflammatory, gut busting compounds. All of which make attaining gut health impossible. We have, in a way, traded our sense and sensibility for what we were told was convenience and would free us from the burden of cooking high quality, nutrient dense meals. This would allow us to be more productive in our lives but what we really gave up was our health. You cannot put a price on that, in my opinion. 

Imagine engaging in lifestyle choices that promote the health and wellness of your gut such as eating a whole foods, nutrient dense diet, managing stress effectively, and prioritizing optimal sleep. It’s a call to action in a sense which will yield the utmost healing and allow us to be the vibrant, joyful people that we are meant to be!