We are 90% microbe and 10% human: Can we lose weight by boosting good bacteria with probiotics and prebiotics? PT3

Did you read the previous post? Read it here:

Some microorganisms initiate chronic low-grade inflammation and weight gain

Chronic disease, weight gain, and obesity are multifactorial problems with no easy solutions. However, there are some conditions, like low-grade inflammation and oxidative stress, that seem to play an especially important role in the development and progression of many health disorders. Contrary to the acute inflammation that occurs when you sprain your ankle or get a wound, low-grade inflammation often goes unnoticed for a long time before symptoms of disease occur. The million dollar question is where this inflammation stems from and how we can prevent or treat disease by managing the inflammatory mileu in the body.

As we’re now starting to unveil secrets of the microbiome and understand the connection between microbes and human health, a lot of researchers are starting to believe that the trillions of microbes in our body could be a key player in driving inflammation and disease. One of the characteristics of chronic low-grade inflammation is elevated levels of proinflammatory compounds in the blood, such as c-reactive protein (CRP) and lipopolysaccharide (LPS). LPS is a toxin found in the outer cell wall of gram negative bacteria, and seems to be especially important in terms of the chronic low-grade inflammation associated with weight gain and obesity.

It’s been shown that the “obese microbiota” has an increased abundance of proinflammatory microorganisms that contain endotoxins like LPS, and that people who are overweight and obese have more lipopolysaccharide circulating in the blood, a state referred to as endotoxemia (29). It’s even been shown that just taking one endotoxin-producing bacterium isolated from a morbidly obese human’s gut induces obesity and insulin resistance in germ-free mice (30).

When gut bacteria ferment prebiotic fiber in the colon, they provide the cells lining the colon – colonocytes – with short-chain fatty acids. The tight junctions lining the intestine depend on these fatty acids, such as butyrate and acetate, to function properly and prevent leakage of bacterial endotoxins such as LPS (31).

So, we have established that obesity is characterized by changes to the bacterial communities in the intestine, and that people who are overweight and obese have elevated levels of proinflammatory compound such as LPS in their blood. These endotoxins immediately prompt an inflammatory response in the body by binding to toll-like receptor 4 at the surface of innate immune cells (32). Since we know that fat tissue in itself can be proinflammatory, it was often believed that the chronic low-grade inflammation associated with obesity was solely a consequence, and not a cause, of weight gain. However, we now know that endotoxemia, and the subsequent inflammation, in itself can initiate weight gain, insulin resistance, obesity, diabetes, and other metabolic disturbances (33,34,35,36,37).

It’s important to note that other mechanisms such as regulation of adipose tissue and liver fatty acid composition, and modulation of gut-derived peptide secretion also are important in terms of gut microbiota and weight regulation. The fact is that there is still a lot we don’t know about the trillions of bugs that inhabit the human body, and although it’s well established that the microbiome plays a role in overweight and obesity, the magnitude of its contribution is still unknown.

Probiotics and prebiotics

As mentioned earlier, prebiotics are non-digestible food ingredients that stimulate the growth of beneficial bacteria in the digestive system. When we eat these types of fermentable substrates, our beneficial gut bugs get a chance to flourish, pathogens are suppressed due to lowering of the pH in the colon, and the production of short-chain fatty acids increases (38). Although only a few types of carbohydrates are officially classified as prebiotics, all of the non-starch polysaccharides found in food are broken down by gut bacteria and could have a prebiotic effect.

Onions, leeks, and jerusalem artichoke are some of the vegetables that are rich in prebiotic inulin-type fructans. Resistant starch is another food ingredient that’s especially effective when it comes to increasing the production of short-chain fatty acids in the colon and enhancing the growth of beneficial bacteria (39). Resistant starch is essentially starch that resists digestion in the small intestine and passes into the colon where most of it’s broken down by gut bacteria. Good sources of resistant starch include green bananas, potato starch, legumes, and potatoes. The resistant starch content of foods like potatoes increase when they are cooked and then allowed to cool for several hours (retrograded starch).

Probiotics are bacteria that have claimed health benefits when consumed. The two most well-studied types of probiotics are bifidobacteria and lactobacillus, which are commonly found in probiotic supplements and fermented foods such as sauerkraut, yogurt, and kefir. Just like with prebiotics, it’s likely that several species of microorganisms have a beneficial effect on human health even if they aren’t officially classified as probiotics. We know that humans have co-evolved for millions of years with the vast bacterial communities in soil, water, and other animals, and one of the costs of modern hygiene seems to be that we are losing touch with these microbial “old friends“ that helped shape our immune system.

@myHFjourney

Read the next post HERE:

Researchers have identified that at a cellular level we are indeed only 10% HUMAN.

Guest post

“Really?” you may say. Yes and the remaining trillions of cells are actually bacteria, fungi and parasites that are living ON US and INSIDE US.1

Feeling a little bit dirty now? Hmmm… Me too!!

But before you rush to grab your hand sanitiser let’s examine how when we add our human cells and the trillions of other types of microbes found in our body — together, we create a “microbiome” an environment which is designed to work in balance. When it does – we experience digestive power, immune strength, balance of the gut-brain axis, robust health and vitality.2

In experiments where animals are raised in completely sterile (germ-free) environments, their immune systems do not develop normally and they developed serious immune diseases including allergy and autoimmunity.3 There is substantial research that outlines if the immune system is skewed by a bacterial imbalance then we see skewed immune responses which appears to the basis of so many of the health challenges children and adults alike face today.

When our “microbiome” is imbalanced, our digestion, immune function, state of mind and general health and well-being become not only unreliable but an imbalanced microbiome is now believed to be one of the primary causes of chronic infection, inflammation, autoimmunity, cardiovascular disease, chronic fatigue, cancer and neurological problems such as Alzheimers, autism and schizophrenia.4

The Canadian Medical Association Journal just a few months ago5 stated that “the disruption of the gut balance has been linked to an increasing number of diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer, allergies and asthma.”

So… allow me to introduce you to these incredibly important microbes.

It’s Time To Get To Know The ‘Neighbours’

These important microbes (our neighbours) are found in all parts of our body — our skin, hair, mucus membranes, the lungs, etc. but by far the highest density of organisms) are found in the digestive tract.6 It must be emphasized that these microbes in the body are so important they are undeniably vital to human survival.

Our human cells live in a mutually beneficial way with these microbial genes and these neighbours of ours are responsible not only for “neighbourhood watch” but so much more, including7:

• promoting intestinal homeostasis,
• stimulating development of the immune system,
• providing protection against bugs that cause disease (pathogens),
• the removal of harmful substances (toxins) – e.g. pesticides, heavy metals
• contributing to the processing of nutrients (including the breakdown of carbohydrates, combining and forming of short-chain fatty acids and vitamins) harvesting of energy.

Talk about having GOOD neighbours – we certainly wouldn’t want to boil them up!!

Due to this MASSIVLEY SYMBIOTIC or WIN/WIN relationship much of the way we look at germs and infections has changed. Interestingly the Human Microbiome Project (HMP)7was established in 2008 to look at different sites and strains of bacteria that we humans carry and the role they play in human health and disease. According to the Journal Genetics, “The microbial compostition of the forearms and the underarms are as ‘ecologically dissimiliar as rainforests are to deserts.”8

In future posts I’ll share with you the importance of this and the studies that demonstrate how babies born via caesarean birth host different types of bacteria to vaginally born babies, babies who are breastfed host different types of bacteria to formula fed babies and additionally how autistic children have been found to carry a variations in bacteria to children without autism. These studies and many more relating to psorasis, stomach ulcers, ulcerative colitis and Chrohn’s disease to name just a few, appear to indicate that we can use these variations in bacteria as a measured characteristic (biomarker) of biological states or conditions.

The importance with this being that if there are certain specific patterns of microbes that appear to relate to different disease or illness states then THE MORE WE UNDERSTAND ABOUT OUR MICROBIOME, THE MORE WE WILL THEN UNDERSTAND HOW IT BECOMES IMBALANCED and results in infection, sickness and disease AND so too will we hopefully be BETTER ADDRESS THESE DIFFERENT ILLNESSES. It also appears that each individual’s community of gut microbes is unique and profoundly sensitive to environmental conditions, beginning at birth and potentially within the womb (in-utero).

Considering Pasteur’s Opposition…

It interests me that back in the time of Pasteur he had two opposing theorists. One was a gentlemen named Antoine Beauchamp (1816–1908) who completely rejected Pasteur’s ideas and believed that germs and parasites will only survive in acidic and unfavourable conditions and therefore mere exposure to germs is not enough to get sick. Beauchamp believed, “The primary cause of disease is in us, always in us.” His philosophy forms the basis of many of today’s Alkaline Diets.

The other man who opposed Pasteur was Claude Bernard (1813-1878) and he concluded that susceptibility to infectious agents occurs if the body’s internal environment is unbalanced. He coined the term “milieu interieur” — French for “internal environment” — and believed that this terrain determined our level of health. He is quoted as saying “death sits in the bowels…” and “bad digestion is the root of all evil”. When you hear people speak about “good terrain” or bacterial balance, Bernard’s lifework forms a solid foundation here.

Pasteur verbally disagreed with Beauchamp and Bernard and at the time his theory seemed to fit the mindset of the people and establishment better. As a result pencillin and antibiotics were eagerly being formulated ironically at the same time that other lead thinkers were proposing simple theories relating to hygiene. Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865) began the “hygiene hypothesis” when he found that death rates of mothers and babies were three times higher in doctors wards (13–18%) compared to the death rates in midwifery wards (2%).

He concluded that the higher rates of infections in women delivered by physicians and medical students were associated with the handling of corpses during autopsies before attending the pregnant women, this was not done by the midwives. Observing the high rate of deaths in hospitals he suggested that it was not wise for doctors to move from working with cadavers or dead bodies to women in labour. He suggested that doctors’ hands were washed between caring for patients. He conducted a study in which the intervention was hand washing and in a controlled trial the mortality rate fell to about 2%—down to the same level as the midwives. Later he started washing the medical instruments and the rate decreased to about 1%.

This seems ludicrous now in our day and age but interestingly despite his various publications of results where hand-washing reduced mortality, Semmelweis’s observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. Some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands. Semmelweis’s practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death (age 46), when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory.

@myHFjourney

Read part two of this post HERE:

Humans Carry More Bacterial Cells than Human Ones

Another guest post on the topic

You are more bacteria than you are you, according to the latest body census

By Melinda Wenner | November 30, 2007

We compulsively wash our hands, spray our countertops and grimace when someone sneezes near us—in fact, we do everything we can to avoid unnecessary encounters with the germ world. But the truth is we are practically walking petri dishes, rife with bacterial colonies from our skin to the deepest recesses of our guts.

All the bacteria living inside you would fill a half-gallon jug; there are 10 times more bacterial cells in your body than human cells, according to Carolyn Bohach, a microbiologist at the University of Idaho (U.I.), along with other estimates from scientific studies. (Despite their vast numbers, bacteria don't take up that much space because bacteria are far smaller than human cells.) Although that sounds pretty gross, it's actually a very good thing.

The infestation begins at birth: Babies ingest mouthfuls of bacteria during birthing and pick up plenty more from their mother's skin and milk—during breast-feeding, the mammary glands become colonized with bacteria. "Our interaction with our mother is the biggest burst of microbes that we get," says Gary Huffnagle, a microbiologist and internist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. And that's just for starters: Throughout our lives, we consume bacteria in our food and water "and who knows where else," Huffnagle says.

Starting in the mouth, nose or other orifices, these microbes travel through the esophagus, stomach and / or intestines—locations where most of them set up camp. Although there are estimated to be more than 500 species living at any one time in an adult intestine, the majority belong to two phyla, the Firmicutes (which includeStreptococcus, Clostridium and Staphylococcus), and the Bacteroidetes (which include Flavobacterium).

For a long time, scientists assumed that these bacteria, despite their numbers, neither did us much harm nor much good. But in the past decade or so, researchers have changed their tune.

For one thing, bacteria produce chemicals that help us harness energy and nutrients from our food, Huffnagle explains. Germ-free rodents have to consume nearly a third more calories than normal rodents to maintain their body weight, and when the same animals were later given a dose of bacteria, their body fat levels spiked, even if they didn't eat any more than they had before.

Intestinal bacteria also appear to keep our immune systems healthy. Several studies suggest that microbes regulate the population and density of intestinal immune cells by aiding in the development of gut-associated lymphoid tissues that mediate a variety of immune functions.

The bacteria also appear to influence the function of immune cells like dendritic cells,T cells and B cells, although scientists don't know the precise mechanisms yet. And one chemical released by the bacterium Bacteroides fragilis is capable of directing how the developing immune system matures.

Further, probiotics—dietary supplements containing potentially beneficial microbes—have been shown to boost immunity. Not only do gut bacteria "help protect against other disease-causing bacteria that might come from your food and water," Huffnagle says, "they truly represent another arm of the immune system."

Of course, they can't protect against every onslaught, which is why we still have to depend on antibiotics to rid us of some disease-causing infections. But antibiotics don't just kill off the "bad" microbes, they wipe out the "good" ones, too. That's why antibiotic use can cause diarrhea and upset stomach: The drugs interfere with the balance of our bacterial flora, making us sick, Huffnagle explains.

But the bacterial body has made another contribution to our humanity—genes. Soon after the Human Genome Project published its preliminary results in 2001, a group of scientists announced that a handful of human genes—the consensus today is around 40—appear to be bacterial in origin.

The question that remains, however, is how exactly they got there. Some scientists argue that the genes must have been transferred to humans from bacteria fairly recently in evolutionary history, because the genes aren't found in our closest animal ancestors. Others argue that they may be ancient relics from evolutionary events that took place early in our species's history and, for reasons unknown, the genes were lost in these ancestors. It's impossible to know for sure at this point.

"There remain to my knowledge no clear cases of human genes recently acquired from bacteria," says Cédric Feschotte, a biologist at the University of Texas at Arlington. "It doesn't mean there are none, but they are not well documented."

One thing is for sure: our lives and even our identities are more closely linked to the microbial world than we may think. Bacteria do a lot to keep us healthy, and scientists are just beginning to uncover their valuable secrets. As U.I.'s Bohach says: "We do not completely understand the full impact of our bacterial flora on our health and physiology."

Food for thought, yes?

@MyHFjourney