environment growing up, increases risk of allergy as it’s the bugs that educate and keep our immune response balanced and appropriate.2 ‘Nurture your Microbiome’, could become the best piece of advice that a health practitioner gives, because it transpires they don’t just hitch a ride, our microbes aid detoxification, contribute nutritionally, inform the immune system, influence mental health and when imbalances occur, can not only influence our propensity to gain weight, their absence – post antibiotic use – has repercussions for the gut’s barrier function leading to inflammation – which underpins all chronic disease.1
The last 50 years has witnessed an explosion of antibiotic use, both as medicinal prescriptions but also in the food chain. Don’t get me wrong, clearly antibiotics have their place, they revolutionised twentieth century control of infection, but balance is required now with antibiotic resistant pathogens evolving faster than ever. In addition, antibiotics exact a high price in the gut, with collateral damage to our microbial friends, so what are the repercussions of this?
Microbes hang out in the mucous layer as guardians of our gut’s ’barrier’ function. This allows dietary nutrients through, while keeping out unwanted intruders and undigested foods. So if antibiotics have disrupted the microbes and therefore this barrier function, it can result in more permeable intestines.
An overly ‘leaky-gut’ where passport control is less than effective will not only activate the immune system, the increased flow of toxins and antigens to the liver can potentially overload its detoxification capabilities. This can produce headaches and might exacerbate skin conditions, and I’ve no doubt the chemicals absorbed through our skin, from our lotions and potions add to the liver’s burden, whilst also affecting the surface skin’s microbiome. Have a look at the long list of unpronounceable chemical ingredients in your favourite body lotion. We absorb much of that and expect our poor old liver to deal with it, and that’s before we add 3 glasses of our favourite tipple to its load, just to wind down on Friday night!
So how should we nurture our gut Microbiome? Through good food choices! Vegetables in particular directly impact the diversity and ability of different species to flourish. Most people are aware of the health attributes of the Mediterranean diet, as it’s been shown to lower cardiovascular risk. A recent study threw up a very interesting fact: it looked at the food habits of 818 people aged 70 and over, from Sweden, Greece and Australia, and followed them over a 7 year period. It found elderly Greek-born Australians with a high prevalence of obesity and Coronary Vascular risk factors none-the-less had the lowest risk of death. How had they achieved this? The study concluded that it was not just their healthy Mediterranean diet in isolation, it was the fact that this diet – high in vegetables – beneficially altered their gut microbiomes and the resulting metabolites.5 A few years ago the researchers’ focus would have been to extrapolate single nutrient benefits from such a diet. Now we know that in addition, the whole vegetables themselves nurture abundant microflora in the gut, whose protective presence and metabolic effect induce enormous health benefit.
Gut – Brain axis
So what of brain health? How are our gut microbes influencing the central nervous system, with implications for neurodegenerative conditions, and autoimmune conditions like multiple sclerosis? Recent findings suggest that while certain gut microbes are protective against inflammation, others actually induce pro-inflammatory conditions like multiple sclerosis.6 Inflammation – a common, underlying factor in all autoimmune conditions – is likely resulting from toxic by products of pathogenic bacteria, passing through overly leaky gut tissue. Inflammation is common to all chronic, age-related disease, as well as mood disorders like depression, and a less than healthy gut – with or without symptoms – can be a constant source of systemic inflammation. So 