’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 this represents really fertile ground for researchers who hypothesize that dysfunction within the gut microbiota, associated with altered diets, may affect the gut-brain axis and could be implicated in the development of mental illness and neurodevelopment disorders like autism.7
For integrative Functional Medicine, these are exciting times, with exciting implications for areas of disease that have so far struggled to make headway with conventional drug treatments. Bottom line – eat more veg, to look after your friendly bugs who in turn will look after you!
1 Collins F (2014) Not Sterile After All: The Placenta’s Microbiome. National Institutes of Health. Online: http://directorsblog.nih.gov/2014/05/28/
2 Aagaard K et al., (2014) The placenta harbours a unique microbiome. Science Translational Medicine 6(237):237ra65
3 Suez J et al., (2014) Artificial sweeteners induce glucose intolerance by altering the gut microbiota
5 Kouris-Blazos A & Itsiopoulos C. (2014) Low all-cause mortality despite high cardiovascular risk in elderly Greek-born Australians: attenuating potential of diet? Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 23(4):532-44.
6 Ochoa-Repáraz J et al., (2011) Gut, bugs, and brain: role of commensal bacteria in the control of central nervous system disease. Annals of Neurology 69(2):240-7.