Manual Understanding the Importance of Gut Health

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The gut microbiota, all the microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, viruses, and archaea) that colonize the gut, plays a key role in metabolism, nutrition.
Table of contents

Some stress management techniques include meditation, deep breathing exercises, and progressive muscle relaxation. Although it is often necessary to take antibiotics to combat bacterial infections, overuse is a significant public health concern that can lead to antibiotic resistance. Antibiotics are also damaging to the gut microbiota and immunity, with some research reporting that even 6 months after their use, the gut still lacks several species of beneficial bacteria. As a result, the CDC recommend that people discuss antibiotics and alternative options with their doctor before use.

Regularly exercising contributes to good heart health and weight loss or weight maintenance. Research has also suggested that it may also improve gut health, which may, in turn, help control obesity. Working out may increase species diversity. A study found that athletes had a larger variety of gut flora than nonathletes. However, the athletes also ate a different diet to the control group, which could account for the differences in their microbiomes. The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommend that adults engage in at least minutes of moderate intensity exercise each week, along with muscle strengthening activities on 2 or more days each week.

A animal study indicated that irregular sleep habits and disturbed sleep can have negative outcomes for the gut flora, which may increase the risk of inflammatory conditions. Establish healthful sleep habits by going to bed and getting up at the same time each day. Adults should get at least 7 hours of sleep per night.

Just as antibiotics can disrupt the gut microbiota, so too can disinfectant cleaning products, according to the results of one study. The research analyzed the gut flora of over infants ages 3—4 months. The researchers found that those who lived in homes where people used disinfectant cleaning products at least weekly were twice as likely to have higher levels of Lachnospiraceae gut microbes, a type associated with type 2 diabetes and obesity. At age 3, these infants had a higher body mass index BMI than children without exposure to such high levels of disinfectants.

Gut & Microbiology

Smoking affects gut health as well as the health of the heart and lungs. It also greatly increases the risk of cancer. A review of research published over a year period found that smoking alters the intestinal flora by increasing potentially harmful microorganisms and decreasing the levels of beneficial ones. These effects may increase the risk of intestinal and systemic conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease IBD. Studies have demonstrated a significant difference between the gut microbiomes of vegetarians and those of people who eat meat.

For example, in one small study , people with obesity followed a strict vegetarian diet that eliminated all animal products, including meat, dairy, and eggs, for 1 month. At the end of the study, the participants had lower levels of gut inflammation due to the altered types of gut microbes. They had also lost weight.

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By making appropriate lifestyle and dietary changes, people can alter the diversity and number of microbes in their gut for the better. Positive changes a person can make include taking probiotics, following a fiber-rich vegetarian diet, and avoiding the unnecessary use of antibiotics and disinfectants. Other simple lifestyle changes a person can make include getting enough sleep and exercising regularly. However, a person should talk to their doctor before making any drastic changes to their diet. This is because for some people, such as those with irritable bowel syndrome or other medical conditions, probiotics and fiber-rich or vegetarian diets may not be helpful.

Stress is a biological response to demanding situations and a regular part of daily life. But studies have already found that certain environments, foods and behaviors can influence gut health for better or worse. Most of those organisms are bacteria, but there are viruses, fungi and other microbes as well. Most likely, she says, both are true. Some bacteria fight inflammation , while others promote it. When the gut works as it should, these two types keep each other in check. But when that delicate balance gets skewed, inflammatory bacteria can take over—and they can produce metabolites that pass through the lining of the gut and into the bloodstream, spreading the inflammation to other parts of the body.

Specific types of bacteria in the gut can lead to other conditions as well.


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Studies in both animals and humans have linked some bacteria to lower immune function; others to greater risk of asthma and allergies; and still others to chronic illnesses like diabetes, heart disease , multiple sclerosis and some cancers. Gut health has even been linked to anxiety and depression , and to neurological conditions like schizophrenia and dementia. The makeup of gut bacteria also varies between lean and overweight people, suggesting that it may play a role in causing obesity in the first place.

The food you eat obviously plays a role in the bacterial makeup of your gut, but so do a lot of other factors, including the nature of your birth. Research shows that babies delivered vaginally grow up to have more diverse microbiomes than those delivered via C-section, thanks to the exposure they get to different bacteria as they pass through the birth canal. Breastfeeding has also been shown to foster beneficial gut bacteria. The environment you grow up in matters too. More exposure to germs and bacteria, within reason, can strengthen our microbiomes.

To achieve the defence of the host against luminal bacteria and other potentially harmful substances, the GI immune system is equipped with specific tools, such as the plasma cell-dependent immunoglobulin A IgA defence system, goblet cell-derived mucus production and the synthesis of antimicrobial peptides such as defensins by Paneth cells [ 20 , 49 — 51 ]. All of these tools play a part in controlling the GI microbiome and protecting the host against invasion of luminal bacteria through the gut wall.

Under normal conditions, these mechanisms also prevent direct contact between commensal bacteria and the GI epithelium [ 52 ]. Moreover, the GI immune system allows regulation of inflammatory responses to harmless antigens, such as food antigens or bacterial antigens derived from commensals, by mechanisms that together result in mucosal tolerance. The details of these mechanisms are not fully understood, but it is clear from numerous observations that loss of bacterial challenge and loss of immune tolerance results in severe hypersensitivity reactions, leading to chronic inflammatory states such as allergic disease, autoimmune disease and IBD [ 53 , 54 ].

Thus the GI immune system contributes to both the defence against and the acceptance of bacteria, and it fends off bacteria yet also needs them, all of which illustrate the complex balance of interactions between the GI microbiome and the GI immune system that protect the host and maintain gut health.

Gut bacteria and weight loss: Mayo Clinic Radio

In addition to the mucosal immune system, the ENS is another perplexing and complex control and defence system that is starting to become understood. The ENS contains 10 8 neurons and forms the largest neuronal network outside the brain.


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It monitors luminal conditions via sensory receptors and primary afferent neurons activated by secretagogues from enterochromaffin cells or mast cells such as biogenic amines serotonin and histamine or proteases [ 55 , 56 ]. The ENS is strikingly independent from the central nervous system CNS , yet it regulates almost all major functions of the gut, such as epithelial secretion, absorption and permeability; immune functions; and, as shown most recently, even the GI microbiota [ 40 , 41 ].

GI infections, oral administration of antibiotics and chronic diseases such as IBS are clearly associated with morphological and functional changes in the ENS, which emphasises its role in mucosal defence. The ENS mediates multiple as yet undefined signals to the brain that seem to touch our awareness only under pathological conditions.

10 research-backed ways to improve gut health

Recent experimental studies strongly suggest that luminal conditions and signals, as well as the intestinal microbiota, are integrated into a gut-brain axis GBA. For example, the stress-induced adrenocorticotropin hormone response in animals is much more pronounced in germ-free mice than in colonised animals [ 57 ]. Such interrelationships might provide a scientific basis for any 'gut feeling' or the above-mentioned Asian understanding of the gut being the centre of spiritual and physical strength. The first hints that CNS diseases such as hepatic encephalopathy, depression and autism spectrum disorder might be treated by modulating the GI microbiome for example, with the prebiotic and laxative lactulose, sugar-reduced diets or antibiotics is a further argument for the relevance of the GBA [ 58 — 60 ].

Such findings might explain, at least in part, why probiotics can show effects outside the GI tract. The question of genetic factors that might influence gut health is difficult to answer, because valid data are lacking. Although a few IBS studies on familial associations and gene polymorphisms have suggested that genetic factors might play a role in the pathogenesis of this disease [ 63 , 64 ], the converse argument that genetic factors determine gut health is not justified yet.

In particular, polymorphisms have been examined only in rather small groups, and familial associations do not exclude that environmental factors, including biological, psychological and sociological components, also play a role. Moreover, apart from human gene polymorphisms, bacterial genetic variations have to be considered in this context [ 65 ]. Genetic and environmental factors affecting gut health are not mutually exclusive, since most chronic diseases, including somatic syndromes and IBS, are likely related to both [ 63 , 66 ].

In this context, it is interesting to note that IBS is now also recognised from an epigenetic perspective on the basis of animal studies and a few human data reviewed in [ 67 ]. This emerging field could in the future improve our understanding of how diet and the gut microbiota might influence gut health. Most excitingly, recent data in germ-free and colonised mice indicate that commensal microbiota profoundly shape the invariant natural killer T-cell compartment, a major component of the host immune system, through an epigenetic mechanism [ 68 ].

Food As Medicine: Understanding The Importance Of Food To Gut Health

Other groups have shown that selected bacterial strains can induce regulatory cells that protect against pathogen-triggered or allergen-induced inflammation [ 69 ]. Such data strongly suggest that both genetic and epigenetic factors are involved in the maintenance of gut health.

In summary, the key to understanding gut health is an awareness that the GI barrier consists of multiple epithelial functions, the mucosal immune system, the ENS as well as the tissue matrix, the muscle layers and the blood supply. The GI barrier not only protects the host against potential dangers from the GI lumen but also allows food and liquid uptake, beneficial cross-talk to commensal bacteria and immune tolerance against harmless antigens.

An intact GI barrier maintains gut health, whereas disturbance of GI barrier functions is increasingly recognised as an early but essential step in the pathogenesis of many GI diseases and even extraintestinal diseases. There is an ever-growing list of diseases for which alterations of the GI barrier have emerged as a crucial event in disease pathogenesis, and this list includes relevant GI and extraintestinal diseases Table 2. It is striking that many of these diseases are characterised by an altered GI microbiota, further suggesting a link between GI barrier function and GI microbiota composition.

The references cited in Table 2 demonstrate several examples of an association between changes in microbiota and disease, although the mechanisms of interaction are not always evident. On the other hand, because of such associations, it is tempting to speculate that the maintenance of normal microbiota and a stable GI barrier contributes to gut health and likely to health in general. Gut health is frequently talked and written about but rarely if ever measured, because the boundaries and characteristics of this kind of 'wellness' are ill-defined.

Diagnostic efforts are mostly oriented towards measurement of pathological situations, but the progress and importance of preventive medicine makes assessment of normal organ functions an increasingly relevant exercise. To assess gut health, diagnostic methods must cover both subjective complaints and objective parameters.

Complaints cannot be assessed without registering an individual's history by using a questionnaire or performing a structured personal dialogue, for example, with the doctor. Questionnaires, ideally combined with some biomarkers of prognostic relevance, are also appropriate to screen a population and to accustom people to this particular issue, which is still often considered taboo.

Such an approach requires validated tools adapted to bowel-related complaints and symptoms that would enable clinicians to record improvements in well-being, quality of life and prognosis in selected populations Table 3.

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One advantage of this questionnaire is that it has been adapted and validated in several languages and cultural milieus. Logistic regression and discriminant analyses have shown that the BDQ is a valid measure of symptoms of functional GI disease. The Health Status Questionnaire HSQ is another reliable, valid, low-cost measure of health status that was created to assess the general population [ 73 ].

On the other hand, both the HSQ and the SF assess general health status, but not specifically gut health. Therefore, a short general questionnaire could be combined with a gut-related one, although this combination has yet to be evaluated. It may be helpful to combine such questionnaires with, for example, the Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale, consisting of 15 questions on symptoms [ 75 ], or the Bristol Stool Scale, which classifies the form of human faeces into seven categories, with types 1 and 2 indicating constipation, types 3 and 4 being the 'ideal stools', and types 5 to 7 suggesting diarrhoea or bowel urgency [ 76 ].

Moreover, scores have been developed and tested which assess particular symptoms, such as pain, using the Functional Bowel Disorder Severity Index or the Numeric Rating Scale [ 80 , 81 ], as well as scores that assess anxiety using the Visceral Sensitivity Index [ 82 ]. In clinical trials, overall improvement of symptoms has been assessed by using singular global questions such as the IBS Global Assessment of Improvement or the Subject's Global Assessment of Relief, which have yielded reliable results [ 83 , 84 ].

Bowel functions are extremely complex and variable; therefore, objective assessment is a difficult task.