Microbiota - Prebiotics

What are the prebiotics, you would ask? They are fibres stimulating the microbial growth in the gut, when eaten, improving the gut health. These fibres can escape digestion in the small intestine, but once they reach the colon , they will be partially or completely fermented by the gut microbiota. The composition and the activity of the gut microbiota changes, because the microbes able to degrade those kind of fibres are favoured in their growth, and this is beneficial for the host (us).

Prebiotics fibres are made of oligosaccharides, chains of sugar molecules. The most known prebiotics are galactooligosaccharide (GOS), made of chains of galactose sugars and fructo-oligosaccharide (FOS) or inulin, made of fructose sugars. FOS and inulin can be found naturally in plants (onion, garlic, wheat, banana, chicory and various cereals). GOS are made by workers in dairy factories, converting lactose using beta-galactosidase enzymes. As they are digested by our microbiota, short chain fatty acids will be produced, and they will be used as an energy source, to reduce pain or influence the metabolism. 

Prebiotics like GOS, FOS and inulin are very good to stimulate the growth of Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus microbe species/ Both of them are commonly found in breast fed babies, and sometimes are added to the formula and infant milk to mimic the effect of breastmilk and increase Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus in infant's microbiota. They are also added to breakfast cereals, bars of cereals, cheese and custard. Apart from the microbiota fermentation product altering the host response, prebiotics can stimulate bowel movements and help with constipation, as they increase the stool weight, due to the prebiotic and the water attracted by the prebiotic.

Lactobacillus reuteri

Conclusion: Prebiotics are fibres that arrive in the colon intact. Here they are degraded, leading to the growth stimulation of the beneficial microbes in the gut. The microbial activity combined with the higher water content of the faeces will result in improved gastric health. 

Next post will be about probiotics. 

See you soon,

G.

Microbial therapies and diagnostics

We all should know that regarding us and our microbes, we work together to harvest the maximum of energy from our food and to fight against pathogens. But which is the best way to keep our microbiota healthy? Everybody heard, i hope, about prebiotics and probiotics. But anyway, i will try to explain a bit more. There are some fibers called prebiotics, that are beneficial to our microbiota. Also, there are some live cultures of microbes that can stimulate our gut health, once added to our diet. The composition of our microbiota can provide personal information about you, and can be used to develop personal food strategies. Our microbiota holds information that can help us to diagnose certain diseases too. So, while our microbes can tell about our health, they can be also used to improve our health and cure certain diseases. One example is the use of faecal transplant therapy to treat recurrent Clostridium difficile, with a bigger success rate than antibiotics and a lowest rate of recurrence.

I will do next a more indepth blog post about probiotics and prebiotics. See you soon!
G.

The Peter Principle

People in a hierarchy such as a business or government will be promoted until they suck at their jobs, at which point they will remain where they are. As a result, the world is filled mostly with people who suck at their jobs.

(Gurwinder S Bogal)

I found this funny, but it is somehow true. Read some more on the link.

Back to the future?

I was not very active lately and i will try to do it more often if possible.

Cheers
G.

Unintended consequences and longevity theories

Motto: "Until you make the uncoscious conscious, it will direct your fate and you will call it FATE."
Carl Jung

Yes, we are doing some small scale damages to our macro-Universe, as we are destroying our planet and slowly depleting the earthly resources. We are killing ourselves in unnecessary wars, or indirectly by not taking enough care of ourselves. But this cannot even start to compare with the potential damages. We are playing gods with forces and energies we cannot even fathom to understand, do not make me even start to talk about how we try to control them. We are trying to understand, and in our journey, we are using cannons to hit targets as big as a fly. The damages are irreparable, and they tend to be passible to reoccurence. They come back to bite us when we do not even expect. I will not talk about the atomic power and the energies of the atoms right now. This is too easy to understand. Boom, and the human race is no more.

I will try to raise awareness about another hidden danger. The total lack of care of our microbiome (and by this i mean the 1000000000000000 bacteria living in our gut) is coming back with a vengeance. By creating something inocous such as sweeteners, we modified the human microbiota for generations to come. We caused potential diseases such as leaky gut syndrome, auto-immune diseases, inflammatory bowel dsisease, obesity, allergies, cardio-vascular diseases, cancer and maybe some other that we did not realise yet. One of the direct link to all these problems seems to be microbiota dysbiosis (also called dysbacteriosis, is a term for a microbial imbalance or maladaptation on or inside the body, such as an impaired microbiota). More about this, there are bacteria like Bacteroides Fragilis, which can improve neurological symptoms related to the autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and Lactobacillus helveticus, which can greatly improve the behavioural, cognitive and biochemical aberrations caused by chronic restraint stress. In messing up unwillingly with out microbiota, we make it posible for a whole pletora of diseases to appear or increase their occurence. we messed up physically, emotionally and mentally too.

Keep in mind that using a cycle of antibiotics will kill the beneficial microbes also, not only the pathogens, just to give another example. Seems a paradox, but as our knowledge increase, our potential to erase ourselves as a race increases also. We are very efficient in destroying the pathogens, but this can have unexpected consequences. We are forgetting that dirt is good, and that the difficulties will make us more resistant as an organism.

Maybe this is the reason why we did not encounter any aliens yet, as any civilization that advance too quickly will self-destruct at some moment in their evolution.

Think about this.

G.

Quote of the day

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

- James Clear -

Microbiota - Undernutrition and weight loss

The term malnutrition refers to deficiencies, excesses or imbalances in a person intake or nutrients and energy and addresses to three groups of conditions:

1. Undernutrition
2. Micronutrient related malnutrition
3. Overweight.

1. Undernutrition - If you don't have enough nutrients, you are malnourished. It is not always the lack of food, but the lack of quality food. Undernutrition means that you have a shortage of calories and most often of essential nutrients (when the access to food is denied). This is a specific type of malnourishment. As a result, you are being underweight, wasted, growth  is stunted, happening usually after a weight loss event such as infectious disease associated with diarrhea. Stunting means that a person has a low height for age, and it is the result of a long term undernutrition during childhood, holding the child back from achieving their physical and intellectual potential. being underweight is a child with a low weight for age, and you can also be stunted or wasted.

There are clear differences in the gut of the undernourished people compared with healthy individuals. Most of the researches on undernutrition are focused on children, because they need fast growth for their optimal development. Undernutrition in children can have long term health implications: reduced growth rate, immune and cognitive development.

In the same time, the gut microbiota of the undernourished children remains immature. But we do not know if this is a cause or a consequence. In a mice study, after transferring the gut microbiota of a malnourished infant donor, the mice will gain less weight than the ones receiving microbiota from a healthy donor. Undernourished infants often miss bacteria from Ruminococcus and Clostridium group. All those bacteria are the ones producing the short chain fatty acid called butyrate (which is an energy source for the host cells). The microbiota can contribute to the caloric value of your food. This is useful especially when food is scarce, and any part is needed as usable energy.

Ruminococcus bacteria

Another type of malnutrition is Anorexia Nervosa (which is characterized by distorted body image, extreme dieting and the anxiety of becoming obese as main underlying factors). All these symptoms will lead to severe weight loss. Even if it seems different that the undernourishment in children, the common element is the nutrient shortage. And similar changes are noticed in the composition of the microbiota. Anorexia patients will have lower amounts of total bacteria and obligate anaerobic bacteria. In addition, they will also have lower amounts of butyrate producing bacteria and higher amounts of mucin degrading bacteria.

The undernutrition is affecting the microbiota and plays a role in the severity of the undernutrition by releasing less energy from food. The manipulation of the gut microbiota could be a helpful solution for undernourished children.

Next post: Microbial therapies and diagnostics