Diet plays a key role in gut health. There is more than one cause for many GI conditions. Gut microbes can produce neurotransmitters. An unhealthy microbiome likely has low plant diversity or low. levels of bacteria that produce short chain fatty acids.
Our gut microbiome consists of bacteria, viruses, fungi, even yeast. Diet plays a key role in gut health. Genetics plays a role in our gut diversity as well and even environmental factors. We are learning more about how the microbiome differs in different medical conditions.
There is more than one cause for many GI conditions. Gut microbes can produce neurotransmitters. An unhealthy microbiome likely has low plant diversity or low. levels of bacteria that produce short chain fatty acids. It's important to talk to someone who is in the field about a probiotic.
Good morning, Happy Saturday to you all. I hope everyone's doing okay. Give everyone a second to pop in. If you were here last week, I mentioned this week I wanted to take a little bit of time to talk about what we do and don't know about gut health. As I've been going through this little mini series, thought it would be helpful to just talk about and kind of clarify or demystify some of the information that's out there. Because there is a lot and it can be overwhelming and confusing if you're trying to find an answer to something.
And there's a lot of conflicting messaging, which is often the case in this realm. So little background. Our gut microbiome consists of bacteria, viruses, fungi, even yeast. Can be somewhere upwards of 5,000 different species and it can actually weigh between 2 and 5 pounds of our body weight. And it is really important for overall health. Digestion, we know immunity, mood, potentially behavior, these are just kind of beginnings of knowledge we're getting. But we also know that it's still incredibly individual to a person and not fully understood.
So there's a couple of big research projects, the Human Microbiome Project and then the American Gut Project is another one. And these are two different research projects aiming to essentially identify and quantify the microbiome. At this point, it's not looking for like anything diagnostic related or really clinical. Significance is not quite there yet. We're really just like looking at what's in people's GI system. So really cool projects, important work and that's how we're getting a lot of the information that we do know.
So what do we know for sure or what do we mostly know for sure? We know that diet plays a key role in gut health and. Good morning, Melanie, welcome. Diet plays a key role in gut health. A high fiber plant based diet is really beneficial at increasing plant or microbiome diversity. Things like a Mediterranean style pattern, which does not mean Mediterranean foods, but lots of plants, whole grains, nuts, seeds, legumes. Sorry, I feel like I'm about to sneeze. I hate that feeling. And that is associated with a more diverse gut microbiome, less digestive symptoms than the more standard Western diet.
However, we also know that diet is not the only factor that plays a role in gut health. And if anyone tells you otherwise, they are incorrect. Diet is huge. Yes, but so is sleep. We have some, we have some cool research showing how sleep impacts the different levels of bacteria in our gut. Stress is another one that impacts diversity. Medication use. So antibiotics, we know that overusing antibiotics can cause a. What's the word? Dysregulation. That's not it, but I can't think of it right now in microbiome.
Genetics plays a role in our gut diversity as well and even environmental factors. So things like air pollution, the water we drink, things like that will influence our microbiome. Other things that we know and have studied extensively, we know that there are uses in the medical realm, for example, fecal transplants we know to be an effective treatment for infections like C. Diff. We are learning a little bit more about how the microbiome differs in different medical conditions. So things like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, though the clinical significance of that is still unclear.
Again, it's kind of more at this like identify stage. Okay, we know someone with this condition has more of this bacteria and less this bacteria. There's not a lot of what do we do with that yet. Good morning, Speak Wonder talking about things we do and don't know about the gut microbiome. So there's some medical use for that. As I mentioned, antibiotics we know can impact and disrupt gut bacteria, can also potentially, obviously reduces overall diversity, but can potentially affect like antibiotic resistant genes.
And the other thing that we know for sure is that there is more than one cause for many, many, many GI conditions. I see a lot of times very like concrete answers of someone will ask, well, why do I have acid reflux? And someone will say because you have low stomach acid and only low stomach acid. That is not correct. We know that someone that has symptoms of acid reflux can be caused by high or low stomach acid and really a dysfunction of the sphincter. Same thing with something like sibo, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth that has a myriad of causes.
It could be altered motility. So food not moving through your digestive system as quickly as it should, or too quickly, it could also be a structural abnormality. So like quite literally part of your digestive system is shaped differently, could also be the result of immune dysfunction. So if you think about something in like celiac disease, which is an autoimmune condition, that all of those things can cause sibo. So in general, just keeping in mind that very, very rarely is there one cause and one treatment for a lot of gut conditions.
Other things we sort of know, we know that there are some probiotics that have been extensively studied. Lactobacillus, bifidobacterium, saccharomyces, which is a yeast. We know that those can play a role in helping reduce symptoms of ibs. But there's a lot of probiotics out there that are not research backed and we just kind of don't know what they do. There's some research that shows many people's digestive systems are resistant to probiotics. So if you're thinking about a probiotic, it's important to talk to someone who is in the field so that you're not just wasting money on something that's not necessarily going to target your symptoms.
There's actually a. I think it's a public resource. There's this really cool like four page chart that I have that is all of the specific strains and the symptoms that it can help. It took forever trying to fight. Yes. And that's the other, that's the other frustrating thing is a lot of times these things take forever to identify because there's just so much we don't know and so much that we could look at as well. But it definitely leads to a lot of frustration. I feel for people who are feeling bad and not understanding why.
Other things we know for sure. Gut and brain are closely linked. The gut microbes produce neurotransmitters. Speak wonder. I'll try to find a link for it. I have it as a PDF but I know that I got it from like a public website. So I'll find the link and I'll post it in the community tab and if not I'll message you and I can email you my PDF. Where was I? Yes. So gut microbes can produce neurotransmitters. Our gut produces a lot of our serotonin that can affect mood, potentially neurological health.
But a lot of that research is in its very early stages. So yes, we're seeing these associations. But again, what's the clinical implication of it? We're not entirely sure. We have ideas but there's not a lot of concrete this will cause this to happen. And then last but not least, I think this is probably maybe the most useful takeaway of this. We haven't, we being science haven't yet quantified what exactly a quote unquote healthy microbiome is in terms of the types and amounts of different species, bacterial, viral, etc species.
We know that an unhealthy microbiome likely has low plant diversity or low. Keep saying plant. Low micro microbe diversity and low levels of bacteria that produce short chain fatty acids. Which are short chain fatty acids act as the fuel for the cells in your colon. So your bacteria can produce this short chain fatty acid that then gives energy to the rest of your rest of your GI system. And so this is why I always caution people with like commercial stool testing. There's a lot of validated tools in terms of the clinical realm.
If you're going to a GI doctor, they have a variety of tools they can use, but the commercial ones where you, like, poop in a bag and send it in, there's a lot of limitations to that and a lot of them are not very. There's low specificity, which means there's a lot of false positives which can lead to more anxiety. And again, we just don't totally know. These are all really great good bacteria and we want them in this level at this part of your intestines. And these are all really bad bacteria that we don't want any more than this amount.
There's just, we don't know that yet. So always approach those things with caution because a lot of times they're associated with like some sort of product and it might help, it might not. We just don't know. So that's what I've got for you today. There's obviously a lot more than that because microbiome research is exploding and it is very, very interesting work. But those are kind of the big kickers of, yep, here's some things we know, here's what we don't know. There's always a lot of value in saying we don't know rather than giving a false confident answer.
So hopefully this was a little bit helpful. Speak wonder. I'll try to find the website for that handy dandy chart and then if I can't, I'll reach out, but it's kind of helpful. Hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. We got one more live a little bit later this afternoon and then lots of people tomorrow. Anytime. I think I, I really. Sometimes I feel like I still talk too scientific and I try not to, but yeah, hopefully it helps. If you have any other questions, let me know. Otherwise, I'll be back next week, same time.
I think next week is Memorial weekend. Hopefully someone's getting some fun in. If you can have a great rest of your weekend and I'll see you next time.
