Importance of a healthy microbiome

Episode 24 - Importance of a healthy microbiome
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This episode continues education on self-management of fibromyalgia and other chronic pain conditions. Food and nutrition are an essential part of your well-being. Proper nutrition is also essential if you have autoimmune diseases, like lupus or RA, or other chronic disorders.

Today I am discussing the importance of a healthy microbiome. We talk about the complexity of the GI tract, what the microbiome is, and the role it plays in your health and fibro symptoms. I will cover the terms such as microbiome, microbiota,  microbial diversity, dysbiosis, leaky gut probiotics, and prebiotics. I will also provide an overview of the gut and healthy microbiome style of eating.
These are a few slides I pulled from the modules on the gut repair of my Mindful Eating course - you can view it on YouTube - the YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHmh3SkdrrBhS--I6_8IJAQ
 Direct link to the episode https://youtu.be/GAhfSselWOE

If you are interested in the course,   you can sign up for the waitlist on my website. - WAITLIST  Mindful Eating for Autoimmune conditions, chronic pain, and fibromyalgia course.  (https://www.rheumcoach.com/mindfuleatingwaitlist).

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHmh3SkdrrBhS--I6_8IJAQ


Please email me at rheumcoach@gmail.com if you try it or if you have questions. I would love to hear from you.

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Disclaimer: This podcast provides information only and does not provide any medical or psychological services or advice. None of the content on this podcast prevents, cures, or treats any mental or medical condition.

Transcript

Well, welcome back to Episode 24 Of Mind your fiber podcast. Now I know it's been a couple of weeks since my last episode, apparently the summer school break for kids and full time job, or not very conducive to podcasting. I'm still trying to figure out how I can batch produce content and delivered more timely. Today we'll continue talking about nutrition. I now have several episodes dedicated to the nutrition because nutrition plays an important role in managing chronologist symptoms. And many of my fibromyalgia patients in the clinic as well as on social media often asked me about nutrition and how they can improve it. I had several episodes that cover the foundational knowledge of nutrition, such as what macronutrients what a micronutrients are vitamins, the importance of approaching eating from not a diet mentality, reducing perfectionism, etc. Today is a next episode, and we're talking about microbiome. Now, I just finished teaching the course on mindful eating for urban conditions from biology in chronic pain. Now, today's episode, or the few slides are pulled out from several modules are taught on microbiome, I put together a general overview of the microbiome and what it is and how you can improve your gut health. So I'm recording it not only as a audio podcast, but also you can view it on YouTube as a video. So if you want to look at the slides, you're welcome to go to youtube channel, you can find the link in the shownotes. Now if you're interested in this course, you can sign up for the waitlist on my website, I'll also put the link in the show notes. It's not yet ready for enrollment as of June 2022, but you can put your name on a waitlist and that will send information as soon as they start enrollment. As always, if you have any questions about nutrition, the fibromyalgia, or any additional topics you want to discuss, please feel free to email me and I will try to incorporate them in future episodes. Thank you for listening. So again, why nutrition is so important. Good nutrition means eating a balanced and healthy diet, it is important to make sure that you're getting the nutrients, vitamins and minerals your body needs to function properly. Because intestinal tract is complex, it has many organs. It starts in the mouth, then goes down to throat, esophagus, stomach, down to small intestine, large intestine, rectum and the anus. It also has a few accessory organs like liver, gallbladder, and pancreas. There are three main functions of the GI tract, transportation, digestion and absorption of food. First, the food is ingested, chewed and swallowed, then the muscles have the guts of the tube that starts in the throat and goes down through the intestines propels the food through elementary canal and physically breaking down into tiny particles. In the GI tract, the nutrients and water from the foods are absorbed to help keep your body healthy. Whatever is not absorbed, keeps moving through the GI tract until you get rid of it a stool. There's another part of the GI tract, the nervous system, or the enteric nervous system comprised of 100 billion nerve cells, it is the largest collection of nerve cells. This is why we're called the second brain. The first brain is your head brain has direct effect on the stomach and intestines, the second brain because they're tightly connected via the nervous system, the GI tract is sensitive to emotions and pain. The pain in feelings like anger, anxiety, sadness, happiness, all those feelings in many others in pain can trigger symptoms in the gut. Gut nerves need to be treated like an essential part of the GI tract that can organ with needs care. There's another organ can comprise of trillions of microbes that reside inside your gut, called gut microbiome, and affect the immune system metabolism, gi disorders, brain disorders, behaviors, etc. So you also have to think of the microbiome as a part of the GI tract, like an organ that needs care.
So just to review, the GI tract has many organs, but it also has the nerves of the nervous system in the microbiome, in they have to function well together. These are the common terms that you might hear or in the literature or on television. So the microbiome is a collective genomes of the microbes that reside in a particular environment. You may think of that as a physical characteristic of a person or microbe, the organisms genetic material is the genome. So microbes are like humans that populate the earth. And microbiome is like the entire population of humans on Earth. Each human has its own unique genome or DNA. So is the microbes in the gut microbiota are the community of micro organisms themselves, like we'll just have human there reside in different sections of the gut, and have different functions and different characteristics. microbiota diversity is a measure of how many different species reside in that community, like human diversity, how many different cultures races are present, you won't have a high diversity of organisms in the gut because the Lord diversity is considered a marker of dysbiosis or microbial imbalance in the gut and has been found in many conditions that are affecting health, like our immune diseases, obesity, cardio metabolic conditions, like diabetes, heart disease, as well as seen in elderly again, gut microbiome differ along along the GI tract will have different microbes that are present in the mouth, in the esophagus, in the stomach, in the small intestines, large intestine, and, and anus. In the healthy person. This microbes coexist peacefully with the largest numbers found in the small and large intestine, but also throughout the body. Your skin is also covered in microbes, so are your lungs. Many things affect the diversity and health of the microbes? First, we get the microbes during the birth in the actual experience of birth produces a different microbiome of the infant. If the baby was born through vaginal birth, it will have different and more diverse microbes, then a baby born through the C section. Also breastfeeding versus formula feeding will produce different microbiome. The baby who is breastfed has contact of the skin of the nipple, as well as different microbes that actually populate the breast milk. Formula is usually heated in sterile so the baby that doesn't get as many microbes through formula. Also location where will reside please play a big role. If somebody lives on the farm with exposure to animals dirt maneuver, a hay and other plants will have a different population of microbes than somebody who lives in industrial city. Also, geographical locations produce different variety of microbes, due to physical location as well as different exposures to plants, reverse, etc. and culture. Many cultures consume different foods in those foods will have a different probiotics, or or microbes that will populate the gut. Aging plays a role on the diversity and health of microbiome. When the baby is crawling in touching things and puts things in the mouth. The baby's actually diversifying the microbes in our gut as the child grows, and gets exposed to a variety of different foods and vegetables. And the microbes also become more diverse. As a person grows and gets exposed to toxins or medications, or stress, it will also affect the health and diversity of microbiome. We also know that elderly will have less variety, sometimes because of eating or because of influences of medications or lifestyle choices. Also exposures play a role, how much you travel, how much you played in the dirt as a child, how many pets you have? And do you wash your hands on the touching pets play a role in the microbiome diversity and health, other things that influence the health of microbiome, our stress, stress has a negative effect on microbiome diversity as well as function. Many medications affect microbiome, especially antibiotics, hand sanitizers in other sanitizing agents, but one of the biggest influences on the health and diversity of microbiome is our diet. A diet can have an positive and negative effect on the health of microbiome. The microbiome needs a lot of vegetables to produce the variety of healthy microbes. So if the diet is lacking vegetables in, in water, and has many processed foods and sugars, the microbiome will be not as healthy and not as diverse microbiome consists of microbes that are both helpful and potentially harmful, most beneficial in living symbiotic relationship, meaning the human body and the microbes benefit from living together. Some is no numbers. Microbes are pathogenic, meaning they can promote disease. But in a healthy body, pathogenic and beneficial microbes coexist without problems. If there's disturbance in the balance, brought on by infection, diet or prolonged use of antibiotics or other bacteria destroying medications. dysbiosis occurs in it will stop normal interactions between the good and bad bacteria. As a result, the body may become more susceptible to diseases and the gut brain connection will malfunction there are many benefits of microbiome. microbiome stimulates the immune system, it also breaks down potentially toxic food compounds. It produces certain vitamins and amino acids including B vitamins and Vitamin K. sugars, like table sugar and lactose from milk are quickly absorbed in the upper part of the small intestine. They require little digestion. But the more complex carbohydrates like starches and fibers, plant foods are not easily digested in need to travel from large to large intestine, where the microbiota help break down this compounds. Fermentation is the chemical breakdown of substance by bacteria, yeast or other micro organisms, typically involving bubbles or fees and give off heat. The fermentation of indigestible fibers causes the production of certain fatty acids called short chain fatty acids. These fatty acids are special because we humans cannot make them they can only be made by microbes. These fatty acids are used not only for nutrition, but also play an important role in muscle function, prevention of chronic diseases, including cancers and bowel disorders. Studies shown that this short chain fatty acids may be useful in the treatment of us have colitis, Crohn's disease in antibiotic associated diarrhea butyrate a short chain fatty acids produced during the fermentation of dietary fiber from plant foods may suppress colon cancer growth. The microbiome of a healthy person will also provide protection from from ill causing organisms that enter our body through drinking of food, for example, gut microbes or specialized immune cells to produce potent antiviral proteins that ultimately eliminate viral infections. In the body of the person lacking this beneficial gut bacteria will have a strong of immune response to invading viruses. So maybe this is why some people who have penetration who are obese and or have diabetes have more serious and complicated COVID-19 infections also got gut microbiota plays an important role in the bidirectional communication between the gut in the central nervous system the brain, the microbes can influence the brain function via the immune cells hormones in nerve cells. Also, God produces 90% of neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine, glutamate and GABA. chemical messengers that let nurse communicate with each other, in keep brain functioning also can affect the mood. So dysbiosis is also called this bacteria. osis is a condition when the gut bacteria becomes out of balance, or imbalanced. To have a healthy microbe, you should have protective in harmful microbes. This balance keeps your gut working properly, the right amount of bacteria in your gut flora helps regulate bacteria, kind of self governing body, the good bacteria in the bad bacteria keep each other aligned changes to your gut microbiome may occur because the different organisms in your gut are not in the right levels or right amounts. When you've got microbiome loses the diversity of bacteria, it can increase your risk of getting chronic disease or chronic infection. All it takes is two hours worth of psychological stress to completely change the bacteria in your gut. So why they will have so many issues as microbiome. It starts at birth when the baby's born through via C section versus vaginal birth. Then the baby is fed thermal instead of breast milk. Also, we'll
see increased consumption of processed foods that negatively affect the diversity in health of the microbiome. Then we'll also use antibiotics or other medications that suppress the growth in diversity of the microbiome. clean environment antibacterial products living outside of exposure to nature. Animals are dirt, also consuming ingredient foods that were sterilized or bleached, disinfected or microwave this Though there are many reasons why we have in our society issues with health of the gut or the microbiome. So there are three types of dysbiosis. In most cases, you may have all three, occurring at the same time, it's not uncommon. So the first one is loss of good bacteria from your gut, something killed the good bacteria, like an antibiotic, or you do not consume food that promotes the growth of good bacteria, then there is going to be too much growth of harmful bacteria. If there is an imbalance between good and bad bacteria. The harmful bacteria may outgrow the amounts, and there's no good bacteria to suppress it. Third is loss of overall microbiome diversity, it means you lose the good and the bad bacteria in your gut. You don't have as many different micro organisms so that some functions will be missing. Americans have about a third less of my microbiome diversity than an average person living in undeveloped country. So when you got health gets imbalanced in dysbiosis happens, you're more likely to have gi in other health conditions. This will include IBD, or inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn's, ulcerative colitis, IBS or irritable bowel syndrome, diabetes, obesity, cancer, cardiovascular problems, central nervous system disorders and infections. Also, there may be many symptoms due to dysbiosis such as chronic fatigue issues digestion, trouble urinating, acid reflux or heartburn, vaginal rectal infections or eaching. Food intolerances, gas and bloating, inflammation and achy joints, acne, skin rashes and psoriasis add in issues with concentration, anxiety and depression. As you can see some of the symptoms that that we'll see in pharmacology may be due to the symptoms from dysbiosis. Another important condition we hear about more in the news is leaky gut syndrome. Looking at is a condition in which gaps between the tight junctions of of the epithelial cells in the gut are impaired in allow pathogens to look through the intestinal walls and pass directly into the bloodstream. We'll have cells in our gut called enterocyte. The fuel cells that produce a gut blood barrier, so they play an essential role in the gestion as well as absorption of nutrients. They're aligned with villi. And there's little projections that increase absorption those will villi also gives surface for good bacteria to live there have and have many sensory and immunologic functions. We also have goblet cells that produce mucus that is essential to cover those villi and produce a barrier. If you can tell these cells are tightly connected to each other via the tight junctions. In leaky gut, These tight junctions are impaired, the cells are not so tightly bound together, they have room for the microbes and toxins to leak through into the bloodstream. So our body tries very hard to maintain this barrier between the inside of the intestines and the bus stream. It helps with nutrition as well as immunity. The cells help us absorb the good stuff and keep the bad stuff out inside the gut into remove the storm. Discharge function of the gut barrier is observed in many conditions, including Crohn's, ulcerative colitis, and other inflammatory bowel condition conditions, as well as IBS type one diabetes and celiac and other food sensitivities and intolerances. Why we're talking about leaky gut syndrome because we can actually repair and prevent damage to the intestines by consuming fiber that fiber from plant foods not only feed the bacteria, it also produces the short chain fatty acids like butyrate, which make the tight junctions stronger, and reduce inflammation. There's also compounds called polyphenols that are that are antioxidants that are found in variety of plants. Many Polyphenols are poorly absorbed from the diet, but they're produced by metabolism. microbiomes so Polyphenols are bioactive compounds that regulate inflammation, a gut microbiome in intestinal barrier function. Also studies show that exercise is important for leaky gut, a prevention people who exercise have healthier long term markers over This low permeability at rest, meaning the have tighter junctions, and less leakage in the gut. The main goals of the microbe friendly diet changes are to improve the diversity of bacteria within your microbiota, and to increase production of the short chain fatty acids through fermentation by microbes, which is a byproduct of their digestion. microbiota diversity can be encouraged by creating an environment in your gut that welcomes and sustains many different types of bacteria. microbiota is very responsive to dietary changes, and stress. Thus, changing foods can very effectively improve the health of your microbes, or worse and dependent on what you eat, and how you manage your stress. Short term dietary changes rapidly influenced the health of microbiome. For better or for worse, rapid shifts, create rapid changes. Long term diet is the goal to achieve and maintain health and diversity of your microbiome. What you eat will either nurture microbes or not. So your food choices long term will translate into positive health effects of healthy microbiome, or will produce ill effects on your overall health. So here are the common terms we use when we talk about microbiota in microbiome, probiotics and prebiotics, probiotics, or the food or supplements with life, bacteria, or microbes, they replenish or add to your existing microbial diversity. prebiotics are what microbes eat. These substances come from types of carbs, mostly fiber that humans cannot adjust. This is bacterial food, the beneficial bacteria in your gut will eat that fiber, in the byproduct of their digestion are the healthy substances that we humans need. We need both. We need bacterial diversity, and we need to keep it by feeding it well. So what microbes eat microbes need food that are called Max or microbiota, accessible carbohydrates. These are carbohydrates that are resistant to digestion, but humans in there are made available for gut microbes. These Macs are also called prebiotics, they will ferment or metabolize in your gut after bacteria ate them in the bacteria will produce short chain fatty acids that humans need. So microbes have two choices in terms of Max. The food that we eat are fiber and plants. The prebiotics are the mucus, that is the protective layer of your gut lining. Some microbes prefer mucus. If you have many of those mucus preferring bacteria, they will eat away your gut lining producing the condition. leaky gut. So feeding the bacteria that prefers plants, and fiber will keep the number of mucus eating bacteria at bay. So principles of microbiota focus diet, you need to eat more Max, the food we eat, that microbes can eat fiber and plants, their probiotics, we need to consume meat in limited quantities. We need to limit saturated fat, animal fat intake, and we need to consume foods that are rich in bacteria, probiotics, the fermented foods, and we also need to reduce stress. microbiome friendly diets, like Mediterranean diet or paleo will produce high diversity of microbiome. The Western diet, or any diet that is lacking fruits and vegetables that are fresh in fermented foods will produce a low diversity of microbiome in your gut. So overall, eat food, not too much, mostly plants, and this will produce a healthy microbiome