From: hound23x@gmail.com   
      
   UNITED KINGDOM      
      
   17 March 2015 by Jacqui Gibbons    
      
   Your microbiome: groundbreaking research about our gut bacteria shows it could   
   be the key to health   
      
   Did you know you have ten times more bacteria in your gut than human cells?   
   Millions are being spent on research to uncover its crucial role in health and   
   disease. Jacqui Gibbons reports   
   Health. Microbiome. Reseach into gut microbes. 620 Photo from Stocksy   
   Scientists have become very interested about what's in our bellies, and you're   
   going to be hearing a lot more about it   
   The microbiome is big news in health this year. Fortune Magazine has declared   
   2015 The Year of the Microbiome, and there is significant research going on to   
   fully understand its complex relationship to health and disease, notably the   
   multimillion-dollar    
   five-year Human Microbiome Project.     
      
   But what is is? And why is getting so much attention?   
      
   We have more bacteria in our body than we do human cells, up to ten times   
   more. Most of them are in our intestines; we each have literally trillions of   
   bacteria and fungi living in there. Scientists are increasingly realising the   
   importance to our health    
   of this human ecosystem.   
      
   Our microbiome is essential for human development, immunity and nutrition. It   
   helps to digest our food, regulate our immune system, protect against other   
   disease-causing bacteria, and produce several vitamins including B vitamins.   
      
   However, imbalance in your microbiome can contribute to chronic illnesses of   
   the gastrointestinal system such as IBS and Crohn's disease. It may influence   
   your susceptibility to infectious disease, and certain collections of microbes   
   may determine how    
   you respond to drug treatments.   
      
   Why inflammation should be your number one health concern in 2015   
      
   Time and money - a lot of time and money - is being devoted to studying in   
   detail these microbes that live in the human body. Several studies over recent   
   years have uncovered the structure of the bacterial microbiome and how it   
   functions, both in its    
   healthy state and in a variety of disease states.   
      
   In particular, the US National Institute of Health spent $173 million on its   
   five-year Human Microbiome Project, to describe the microbiome, identify and   
   characterise its microorganisms, and analyse its role. This enormous project   
   is a roadmap for    
   discovering the role of the microbiome in health, nutrition, immunity and   
   disease.   
      
   And there is increasing evidence that the microbiome has an affect on the   
   central nervous system and brain, affecting how we think, feel and act, and on   
   the development on neurological conditions. In 2014, a major neuroscience   
   symposium called this work    
   a "paradigm shift" in brain science.    
      
   How our microbes make us who we are   
   Watch this TED talk by pioneering microbiome researcher Professor Rob Knight:   
      
      
   The organisms in our microbiome - bacteria, fungi, protozoa and viruses - live   
   on and in our bodies but, though they may sound rather unsavoury, think of   
   them as helpful and welcome colonizers rather than invaders. They start to   
   colonize us at birth, and    
   come from the food we eat and anything else that gets into our mouth, like   
   pollution, putting your hands to your mouth, etc.   
      
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   The exact types and combinations of organisms in our bodies is constantly   
   changing, over months, weeks and sometimes daily. Different ones exist in   
   different parts of our body, some of them temporary residents, some passing   
   through, and some more firmly    
   embedded.   
      
   They travel around between different systems in the body, between people   
   living in the same house, and between ourselves and the various environments   
   we come into contact with each day.    
      
   However, over time, disease-causing microbes accumulate. They affect our   
   metabolic processes and even our gene activity, causing an abnormal immune   
   response against the body's normal tissues and substances.   
      
   Health conditions and microbiome dysfunction   
   Such dysfunction is associated with conditions including inflammatory bowel   
   disease, obesity, Crohn's disease, malnutrition, and autoimmune diseases such   
   as type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, muscular dystrophy, multiple   
   sclerosis and fibromyalgia.   
      
   Autoimmune diseases are now believed to be passed on in families not by DNA   
   inheritance but by inheriting the family's microbiome.   
      
   Genetic studies have linked various combinations of different species in the   
   microbiome to certain health conditions. The evidence so far suggests that a   
   balanced and diverse microbiome contributes to good health and a less diverse   
   and less balanced    
   microbiome to poor health.   
      
   In developed countries, we are likely to have less diversity in our gut flora.   
   This means we can lack the resilience necessary for a strong immune system is   
   linked to inflammatory conditions, leaky gut and autoimmune disease, and. Some   
   research suggests    
   the western diet of animal fats and high protein, stress and excess alcohol   
   may be factors.   
      
   Microbiome research in Britain   
   The microbiome and issues surrounding it has become an area of huge medical   
   interest and importance. Some of the questions being looked at include how it   
   affects our nutrition; how probiotics and antibiotics affect it, and how it   
   affects our reaction to    
   drugs; and how research findings can be used in clinical settings.   
      
   If you would like to participate in research into microbiome profiling, a team   
   at Kings College London is currently crowdfunding The British Gut Project, a   
   scientific project to build and study a database.    
      
   Effect of diet on the microbiome   
   Research into how the foods we eat affect our microbiome is at an early stage.   
   It is known that eating sufficient dietary fibre can help feed the beneficial   
   bacteria, which in turn produce nutrients that nourish the cells that line our   
   gut.   
      
   Too little fibre, on the other hand, can starve them, and when they're starved   
   of fibre they eat us: they gnaw away at the mucin (protective proteins) in the   
   mucus lining in the large intestine.   
      
   A plant-heavy diet helps to increase diversity in your microbiome (yup, yet   
   another reason to eat more vegetables - a lot more). Plants give the microbes   
   something to chew on, break down, digest and extract nutrients from. It's what   
   they need to survive.   
      
      
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