What does this image have to do with gut health? Think of your body as a planet. It’s inhabited by trillions of micro-organisms adapted to the various environments provided by different parts of your anatomy. Most of our 40 trillion resident microbes are bacteria, but we also house viruses, fungi and archaea. So there’s no reason to ever feel lonely.
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Today’s Brain Booster is: Go with your Gut.
Is your gut sensitive, irritable, leaky or inflamed?
Are you into:
- Prebiotics
- Probiotics
- Postbiotics
- Synbiotics
- Psychobiotics
- Pharmabiotics
- Antibiotics
- Penbiotics
- Or Panbiotics?!
(I will explain all those terms over the next few episodes.)
Why does it matter?
For most of modern medicine, the brain and gut were treated as separate organs, with separate problems. If you had indigestion, you saw a gastroenterologist. If you had memory loss, you saw a neurologist. Today, that division is fast disappearing: what happens in our gut, doesn’t stay in our gut.
Scientists now recognise that our gut and our brain are in constant communication through what’s known as the gut-brain-microbiome axis. Signals travel back and forth, every second, via nerves, hormones, immune pathways, and chemical messengers that are produced by the trillions of micro-organisms that live in our intestines.
The estimated number of microbes in our gut is about 40 trillion, with a combined total weight of over 2 kg. That’s more than the weight of our brain, which is 1.4 kg! And our micro-organisms have evolved to play essential roles in maintaining our health. They help us digest food, neutralise toxins, and control how many calories we absorb, ie they influence our body weight and our risk of developing obesity. They produce vitamins, facilitate absorption of minerals, impact our mood, and train our immune system. And gut micro-organisms influence our likelihood of developing asthma, allergies, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, depression, dementia, heart disease, cancer, and a whole lot more. Tune in for a whirlwind tour of your internal ecosystem, and find out how faecal transplants can save lives — holy crapsule!
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Today’s Health Headline is: What’s your Gut Reaction? In other words, what’s going on in your gut, and how does it impact every aspect of your health?
Let’s look at some extraordinary numbers.
The microbiome — which refers to the genes of all the micro-organisms in our body — accounts for more than 95% of the genes in our body. Let me rephrase that so you can get your head around it. Of all the genes in your body, less than 5% belong to you, and more than 95% belong to your microbes!
It’s estimated there are more bacteria in our gut than stars in the Milky Way, and one gram of faeces contains more bacteria than there are people on earth. That’s right: a single gram of human faeces — about the weight of a paperclip — contains up to 100 billion to one trillion bacteria. By comparison, the entire global human population is about 8 billion people. One tiny gram of your stool has over 100 times more bacteria than the population of this planet.
The most densely populated region of our body is our colon or large intestine, but it isn’t just the gut that serves as potential real estate for microorganisms. Every surface of our body that’s exposed to the outside world — skin, nose, ears, mouth, teeth, lungs, and vagina is real estate for micro-organisms. And they’re very specific about the environments they need for their survival. Like their human hosts, what matters to them is location, location, location …
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This turned out to be another very long Brain Booster and Health Headline, so I’ve ended the episode here, and I’ll continue with What’s Missing from Modern Medicine? and the Whether Report next week. The feedback I’ve received from you is that you’d like the episodes to be under one hour, so that’s what I’ll strive to do.
Thank you for all your comments and questions. I really enjoy them, and will respond to them in due course.
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Click here to watch the episode on my YouTube channel, or listen to Healing with Dr Helena on your preferred podcast platform. I’ll publish a new episode every Monday, and you’ll receive an email notification that morning. Please subscribe to my podcast or YouTube channel so that you don’t miss an episode, and email your whether questions to: podcast@drhelenapopovic.com
If you’re happy for me to play your voice on my podcast, you can provide an audio file. Otherwise, you can type your question for me to read out.
I very much look forward to answering your questions, and exploring how we can all build a smarter brain, stronger body and deeply fulfilling life.
Please share this Health-e-Byte with anyone who is interested in gut health.
