Microbiota diet and disease

Probably everyone knows that our microbiota is an anaerobic chamber with trillions of bacteria which work together and their combined efforts help us break down food and harvest as much energy as possible from the food we eat. Our microbiota depends a lot on the food we consume. In return, it will help us to digest the food we consume. Without the bacteria from our gut, the nutritional value of our food would be a lot lower (we would probably eat 5 times as much food to reach the same energy levels).

When microbes start to degrade the fibers from our food, this process is called fermentation. Microbial fermentation is a common process used to produce food (cheese, beer, bread etc.). All these foods have microorganisms added to them during the making process, leading to special taste or alcohol. Our microbiota also carries out a wide range of fermentation processes, using anaerobic fermentation in order to sustain the inner environment. The bacteria ca ferment both sugar and protein from our food, leading to the production of many chemicals with energetic value, essential vitamins and health stimulating products that are released in our guts by the microbiota. Many compounds are short chain fatty acids such as lactic acid, acetate, butyrate and propionate. All these short chain fatty acids are a major source of energy for our intestinal cells. Almost 10% of the energy used by our intestinal cells comes from the microbial produced butyrate. The butyrate and the propionate have several health benefits (pain reduction and inflammation response reduction).

The microbiota is actually a microbial ecologic network, so, for optimal functionality, we need to have a microbial diverse microbiota. Our gut is an anaerobic chamber with trillions of bacteria working together and their combined effort helps us to break down food and to harvest as much energy as possible from the food we eat.

I will post next about mucus and milk fermentation.
See you soon!
G.