Gut Microbes: A Natural Pharmacy For The Gut

Gut Microbes, a Natural Pharmacy for Better Gut Health

You can’t see them and probably have never been aware of them but what lives in our gut should not be neglected or underestimated. Inside your digestive system lives a vast community of bacteria, viruses, and fungi known as the gut microbiome, and scientists are only just beginning to understand how important it is for overall wellbeing. These tiny organisms may be invisible, but they play a powerful role in your health every single day. Gut microbes are sensitive, we would be wise not to ignore them, they are far more important than we realised.

What Affects Your Gut Microbes?

Microbes are affected by our diet, where we live, whether we live close to animals and our age. If you have taken a course of antibiotics, then your gut microbes will have taken a hit as well as the infection or virus you are fighting. While they are necessary, antibiotics don’t just target harmful bacteria — they can also reduce beneficial gut bacteria. We know that long term stress can have a negative impact on the gut microbiome as can some medication such as antibiotics or chemotherapy.
Evidence is piling up about the importance of this amazing ‘garden’ of the gut, where there are about 100 trillion virus, fungi and Bacteria all finding a home, this is the incredible gut microbiome.

Is There a Link Between Gut Health and Whole Body Health?

More and more we are learning of the links between the microbiome and both physical and mental health. It is a collaborative partnership. In exchange for providing food and a place to survive our gut microbes help us to digest food, support our immune system, hormonal balance and mood while offering us protection from bad bacteria. The biome can affect our appetite, and our energy levels too.

More recently understanding is emerging about the influence of the microbiome on the brain, our behaviour and aging. The microbes may help in the management of the digestive system, for example to help reduce bouts of diarrhoea after antibiotic treatments, it may help in cases of IBS.

Certain gut bacteria are regularly found in people with good metabolic health, while lower levels of these same bacteria are often seen in people with obesity, type 2 diabetes, and digestive conditions such as irritable bowel disease.

What do we know about Postbiotics?

One bacterium that has gained attention is Akkermansia Muciniphila. Interestingly, research has shown that even when these microbes are no longer alive, they can still produce beneficial effects. If the gut microbiome is like a natural pharmacy inside the body, then postbiotics are the medicine it produces. Postbiotics are beneficial compounds created when gut bacteria break down fibre rich foods.
It seems the postbiotics do a lot of the heavy lifting. A. Muciniphilia led to an improvement in insulin sensitivity which is known to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, it also led to lower body weight and lower cholesterol compared to people who took a placebo.

The Gut Microbiome a Growth Sector

In 2021 – the global probiotics sector was estimated to be worth around 44.5 billion pounds and growth the sector has not stopped yet. They are marketed to repopulate your gut to maintain a balance of diversity and keep things healthy.
There are many benefits shown when taking pre, pro-biotics and post biotics. Pre-biotics as the name suggests are taken to provide the live pro-biotics the food they need to survive. Research is happening on post biotics.

How Healthy Eating Supports Your Healthy Gut Microbiome

When it comes to improving gut health naturally, diet is one of the most powerful tools we have. A varied, plant rich diet provides the fibre and nutrients that gut bacteria need to flourish.
Vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and fermented foods all help support a diverse and resilient gut microbiome. The more variety on your plate, the more you tend to support in your gut.

The Value Of A Diverse Diet

For now, diet may be the best route to postbiotic benefits, rather than relying on supplements to feed our gut bacteria, a good plan is to eat a diverse diet with ample plants and avoid ultra processed foods as much as possible, food created in a lab or factory are not really a good idea to nourish your precious gut garden.

Professor Tim Spector and his team, through the Zoe program are researching and learning more and more about our diet and the gut. Spector says, “Microbes are crucial for your health only because of the amazing things that they produce, which are these postbiotics. You’ve got this whole pharmacy waiting inside your gut, now the challenge is to learn how to harness it”.