Your Gut Holds a Secret to Your Chronic Illness
Many people begin New Years with resolutions to be different, and often losing weight is high on the list. Ads for belly fat reduction usually mention a ‘weird’ tip.
The bugs in your gut top the weird list. Not bugs like ants, but intestinal bacteria could be why you’re overweight.
It’s in the Gut
In a normal human, the microbiome (the microorganisms in a part of the body) of the gut is home to about 85% good and 15% bad bugs. But where do they come from?
During the normal birthing process the baby receives its 1st inoculation from the mother’s vaginal fluids (vaginal fluid is a near mirror image of Colonic flora). The 2nd inoculation is from the nipple during breast feeding. As the child develops it is exposed to airborne organisms and soil borne organisms by playing with other children, animals and good old dirt. Hopefully by the time a child is 8-10 years old they have a Microbiome of 200+ species. So for various reasons you could have an imbalance of some kind.
Two new studies show that obese people have different intestinal bacteria than slim people. What’s more, the microbes in an overweight body are much more efficient at extracting calories from food.
One study looked at mice, the other looked at humans.
In both, a family of bacteria known as firmicutes were more plentiful in the obese (20 percent more). Bacteria called bacteroidetes were also much more abundant in those of normal weight (the obese had almost 90 percent fewer bacteroidetes).
Most likely because of the firmicutes, the obese mice were more efficient at taking calories out of complex sugars and depositing those calories in fat.
“When these microbes were transplanted into the normal-weight mice, those mice started to gain twice as much fat. As obese people lost weight, their bacteroidetes increased, while the numbers of firmicutes decreased.”
~Mercola newsletter Jan 06 2007
C-Section babies and Type 2 diabetes
C-section babies lack the diversity of normal intestinal flora and have overgrown amounts of unhealthy (inflammatory) flora. They are twice as likely to develop diabetes. We see an alarmingly highly level of gastric issues with C-section babies. Many infants are prescribed Proton pump inhibitors in the 1st 6 months of life. We believe the altered microbiota is a primary reason for this.
And that’s not all!
A recent study of Crohn’s and Ulcerative Colitis patients’ stools showed after DNA sequencing their stool compared to healthy controls showed a common short-coming. The Crohn’s and Ulcerative colitis stool samples were missing a whole species of important flora, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii. This species produce a substantial amount of anti-inflammatory chemistries as well as Butyrate and Proprionate.
Probiotics aren’t necessarily the answer.
Getting the best balance of microflora is best achieved through colonics and fecal transplants. This allows a good mix of flora to enter the system, instead of being killed by stomach acid.
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