Supreme Gut Health: 10 Benefits of Happy Gut Bacteria

For each body cell, you have 10 microscopic bacteria. Together they make up your microbiome.

An increasing number of researchers believe that a number of diseases are caused by an imbalance in the microbiome. This means that you can optimize your health and well-being by keeping these bacteria healthy and well-balanced.

Many trillions of bacteria keep your gut mucosa healthy and dense, so harmful substances do not penetrate your blood and trigger inflammation.

When you have balanced levels of good gut bacteria, they will even help and boost your immune system, fight harmful bacteria and protect you from, among other things, type 2 diabetes, obesity, depression, rheumatoid arthritis, colon cancer, depression and autism.

Conversely, if you have an imbalance in your microbiome, especially when harmful bacteria levels are high, your risk of getting these illnesses increases. For example, are imbalances in the intestinal tract making you overweight – or is it the extra pounds that are causing the intestinal imbalance?

However, experiments in which fecal matter from obese people was transplanted into mice caused the mice to become obese, suggesting that the gut bacteria play a significant independent role in the development of obesity.

 

 

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No two people have exactly the same microbiome. About 40% of bacteria are fairly similar in all people, but they are not nearly as interesting or important as a special group of gut bacteria that make up less than 1% of the total bacteria in your body.

These bacteria appear to be particularly sensitive to how you live: they are influenced by your eating habits.

Some people have or develop a bacterial profile that makes them extra good at extracting calories from food.

But in our modern world, this can actually make many people extra vulnerable to weight gain.

Different bacterial profiles do different things and some can form anti-inflammatory agents that protect against life-style diseases.

A healthy microbiome is not just about having, or not having, a specific type of bacteria. It is extremely important to have as many different kinds of bacteria as possible: the greater variation the better.

You can create a varied and robust microbiome by eating a varied diet.

Too much sugar, fat and alcohol, near sterile environments, stress, poor sleep and inactivity however, are poisonous to your microbiome and damage any good you might do.

So are antibiotics that kill not only the harmful bacteria, but also the good ones.

 

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This is Why Your Gut Bacteria Are So Important

 

Right now, worldwide research is being carried out to uncover the far-reaching significance of gut bacteria.

Here’s an overview on what we know, believe to be true or have a theory about.

 

 

1) Prevents Asthma and Allergies

When it comes to asthma, gut bacteria are crucially important.

The bacterium Helicobacter pylori can, in certain cases cause stomach ulcers when you are infected with them as an adult, but if you have the bacterium in your stomach from childhood, it may protect against asthma.

It is important that you are exposed to bacteria in early life, because they help to develop your immune system so that you become less prone to allergies and better equipped against autoimmune diseases.

In many developing countries, where hygiene conditions are considered poor by our standards, asthma and allergies are an almost unknown phenomena.

Conversely, asthma, hay fever, eczema and other allergic conditions are becoming more frequent in the western world due to our focus on cleanliness, pasteurization and sterilization as well as our high consumption of antibiotics.

Infants with a low level of four specific types of bacteria in their microbiome have an increased risk of developing asthma in as little as three years.

Children born by caesarean section also have a higher risk of asthma. Currently, the latest trend is to expose the newborn to its mother’s bacteria, the same way as it inevitably happens during a natural birth.

This exposure is thought to give a greater effect than contact with the mother‘s vaginal secretion.

 

2) Manages Your Weight

When scientists transplant gut bacteria from obese people to bacteria-free slim mice, the mice suddenly gain weight, even though they eat the same as before.

There are indications that this might also apply to people. The body absorbs more fat, the muscles burn less of it, and more fat accumulates in the liver and adipose tissue of people with imbalances in their microbiome.

The growing fat deposits create inflammation that spreads to the intestinal wall, which becomes leaky and unable to keep harmful substances from intestinal bacteria, out of the body: creating a vicious circle.

 

3) Can Prevent Blood Clots

When your microbiome is disturbed, it will probably also disrupt your cholesterol and blood fat levels and raise your blood sugar and blood pressure.

These risk factors are collectively called metabolic syndrome and are a huge health threat because the danger of blood clots and type 2 diabetes increases dramatically.

In humans, cholesterol, the fat content of the blood and other adverse effects of obesity are reduced when intestinal bacteria from slim healthy individuals are introduced into the subjects.

 

4) Relieves Chronic Enteritis

One of the most important functions of the microbiome is to prevent inflammation of the digestive tract, which, with the large amounts of food we consume every day, comes in contact with many harmful substances.

Studies show that a diet with plenty of plant foods and a healthy dose of fatty fish, can relieve the symptoms of some, but not all, patients with chronic bowel disease (Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis).

 

5) Boost Your Mood

Most people have experienced butterflies in their stomachs or a funny tummy before an important presentation. But these signals from brain to belly also go the other way.

It is known that intestinal bacteria produce signaling substances such as serotonin that lift your mood.

Animal studies reveal that stressed mice do better when treated with healthy probiotic bacteria like those found in some sour milk products.

In mice with depressive and anxious behavior, transplantation of healthy gut bacteria counters the symptoms and lowers the amount of the stress hormone cortisol in the blood.

Small-scale testing in humans shows the same pattern. When subjects in these studies were presented with both positive and negative messages and information, those who had been given yogurt with healthy lactic acid bacteria placed more emphasis on the positive information than the control group.

They also had less stress hormone in their saliva samples. How the connection works exactly, researchers do not yet know.

Presumably through the large vagus nerve(s) that sends information from the digestive tract to the brain or through the immune system.

 

 

6) Heals Intestinal Infection

A potentially life-threatening intestinal infection with the Clostridium difficile bacterium affects people with a weak immune system and can be extremely difficult to overcome as it is resistant to many antibiotics.

But now doctors have found that the dreaded disease can be treated by transmitting healthy gut bacteria from a healthy human.

It is called fecal transplant and, according to preliminary studies, works amazingly well.

 

7) Eases Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis is an auto-immune disease in which, for unknown reasons, the immune system attacks the body’s own joints.

Researchers are now focusing on the imbalance of microbiome as a measurable cause and have found that people with arthritis have higher levels of a bacteria called Prevotella when compared to people without rheumatoid arthritis and at the same time have fewer Bacteroidetes bacteria in their gut flora.

In animal studies, researchers have succeeded in alleviating rheumatoid arthritis in mice by treating them with certain healthy gut bacteria.

The same goes for sclerosis, which is also an auto-immune disorder. However, we still do not know what the results will be in humans.

 

8) Prevents Colon Cancer

Chronic inflammation of the intestinal wall due to an imbalance in the microbiome probably plays a role in the development of colon cancer.

Cancer sufferers often have a different composition of gut bacteria with less variety than healthy people.

Cancer patients often have high levels of Fusobacterium bacteria that cause inflammation of the intestines and very few Clostridium bacteria that can convert dietary fiber into anti-cancerous substances.

The best way to prevent certain types of cancer is to eat a diet high in dense plant foods and whole grains.

 

9) Regulates Type 2 Diabetes

Regulating blood sugar levels in people with type 2 diabetes becomes easier after they have been administered a culture of intestine bacteria from a healthy person almost immediately.

An unhealthy microbiome destroys the intestinal mucosa, causing inflammation and decreased sensitivity to insulin.

When insulin can‘t keep blood sugar levels balanced and there is widespread inflammation in the body, blood sugar rises and type 2 diabetes can easily develop.

 

 

10) Associated with Autism

Children with autistic spectrum disorders may have intestinal bacteria that are different to those of other children.

Maybe because their digestive system breaks down carbohydrates in a different way, but more specific links are still very unclear.