The other brain - a new book that i just finished (with special thanks to the lock-down)

And it is done, after almost one year and a half. I try to make it short and not very complicated, and i hope you will enjoy reading it. My book about the gut microbiome, our microbial intestinal flora. At the moment, as i just launched the book, you can have it at a discounted price.
Here is the link for:

Ebook

Paperback

''I will start the first chapter, talking about our microbiome, or in layman terms, our gut intestinal flora, the microbes living inside of us and how they are actively helping us. It is an interesting subject, and the latest researches seem to just start to discover how important our relation with our non-pathogenic bacteria and microbes is. These days we keep hearing different opinions about this elusive thing called microbiome. What is that and how it can help us? You are in the right place to find out about it, in the next chapters of this book.''

What it is about?

Here are the contents of every chapter:
1 Introduction
2 History and discovery
3 The life cycle of the gut microbiota
4 Food for thought
5 Is every gut microbiota unique?
6 Malnutrition and microbiota
7 Prebiotics, probiotics and synbiotics
8 Inflammatory bowel diseases
9 Microbial diversity and their importance
10 Anatomical correlations with the gut microbiota

I really hope that you will find time to read it and learn a bit more about the latest researches related to health, microbiota and longevity.
Have a good day!
G.

Microbiota - Next Gen Probiotics

This next generation probiotics can be helpful in new personalised therapies. They are made from microorganisms used to improve health, you can found them in foods and supplements. The ones sold today are mainly lactic acid producing bacteria like bifidobacteria and lactobacillus, isolated from yogurt and milk.

Lactobacillus reuteri

The next generation probiotics can come from the human gut microbiota and they will be used as a medical therapy instead of only improving health. They will be used in conjunction with bacterial cultivation, genome sequencing and tools to modify bacterial genomes. Their range is extended by our ever increasing knowledge of the composition and function of the human gut microbiome. The Next-Gen probiotics are coming from healthy humans. Take Clostridium Difficile infection (CDI) for example, which is prevented by the healthy microbiota acting as a barrier. However, using antibiotics (this being a major risk factor), can be weakened. We can use antibiotic also as an effective treatment for CDI, but because of the consequences mentioned before, relapse occurs on up to 30% of the patients. There were attempts of successfully eliminate CDI via faecal transplantation, and one of the more promising species was identified for future use. It is called Lactobacillus reuteri and it is a bacterium producing an antibacterial compound called reuterin, using glycerol. This bacteria has antibiotic resistance, preventing the recurrence of CDI.

Other promising candidates are Faecalibacterium prausnitii, Eubacterium halii, Bacteroides Fragilis and Akkermansia muciniphila. Take the last one, Akkermansia muciniphila, which is present in low levels in the intestinal tract of the individuals who have Diabetes type 2 or are obese. Tested on mice, reduced the body weight, enhanced glucose tolerance and decreased the presence of endotoxins in blood. The major difference from the actual probiotics is that the new ones will originate from the human microbiota and will be used for personalised therapies (if a patient is lacking certain beneficial microbes, they will be administered). But they are not on the market yet and further research is needed at the moment.

Akkermansia muciniphila

Microbiota - Synbiotics

Synbiotics are a mixture of probiotics and prebiotics that beneficially affect the host. By combining these tow in a food product, this will lead to a better chance of survival and activity of microbes in the gut.

The interaction for two or more things in order to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects it is called synergy. Synbiotics are a mixture of probiotics and prebiotics that beneficially affect the host, with a better survival chance of the probiotics during the passage through the large intestine, avoiding to be made inactive by the high acidic environment present in our stomach, to increase the overall gut health. Once in the intestine, they can start fermenting right away, increasing the activity and growth or the microbiota. The prebiotic can also affect the stool consistency and the bowel movement. Probiotic strains of lactobacilli and bifidobacteria are combined with mixtures of fibers (FOS, GOS, inulin) to create a synbiotic. Synbiotics were tested to help different gut diseases like inflammatory bowel , irritable bowel syndrome, cancer, liver diseases and allergies.

My next post will be about personalized nutrition. See  you soon!

G.

Microbiota - Probiotics

Probiotics were originally introduced as the opposite of antibiotics, living microorganisms consumed to restore the microbiota that we lost after antibiotic treatments. A probiotic is a live microorganism which provide a health benefit to the host and promote gut health when administered in adequate amounts. A probiotic can strengthen the immune system, prevent infection with pathogens, compensate an unhealthy change in our microbiota or an infection by shortening the time of recovery for our microbiome, and even provide extra energy via more short chain fatty acids.

They provide hope in treating lactose intolerance, infections and post-antibiotic diarrhea, immunomodulation for allergies and chronic bowel inflammatory diseases. The biggest challenge is to make them to reach intestine alive, surviving the storage and the acidic medium of our stomach, and delivering the desired concentration in the end (which is strain dependent). We are aiming for 10 at the 7th colony forming units pre milliliter of product. Lactobacillus and bifidobacteria are the most used antibiotics.

Tomorrow i will talk a bit about synbiotics. Have a nice day!

G.