The Human Microbiome
PERSPECTIVE
Guy R. Schenker
DC
Your Key To "Living Stronger Longer"
As a doctor devoted to natural health care, you are surely aware of how important it is that you maintain a healthy intestinal microbiota. Scientific research now shows that a prolific and balanced intestinal microbiota is more critical to your health than you ever imagined.
For decades, it has been known that healthy bacterial colonization of your gut lining is invaluable for preventing and treating gastrointestinal conditions and symptoms—everything from intestinal flu and bacterial infections to chronic irritable bowel conditions. However, the latest studies show that a rich intestinal microbiota has health benefits reaching far beyond the localized effects in the gut. Consider these facts:
• More than 70% of your immune system resides in the lining of your intestinal tract, and it is activated from there by your microbiota to perform immune functions throughout your body.
• Amazingly, the surface area of your gut (if it were spread out flat) is the size of a tennis court—nearly 3,000 sq. ft. • The number of bacteria constituting the typical human microbiota (i.e., the number of critters living on the mucus and skin surfaces of your own body) is 100 trillion microbes.
• How many different species of bacteria constitute your very own personal microbiota? Over a thousand different species live in your gut.
• There are 10 times as many bacterial cells as human cells in your body.
• There are more than 100 times the microbiota genes in your body than there is human DNA.
(Read that again, and think!)
• Researchers have discovered a “gut-brain axis,” which means that influences from your intestinal microbiota can actually control certain aspects of brain function, including attitudes, fears, and behavior. (Think about that!)
• Research also shows that there is a direct axis (a communication system) from your microbiota-controlled gut lining to your muscles, to your fat cells, to your liver, and to your pancreas.
All aspects of your body’s metabolism are then influenced by your microbiota.
It would not be too much of a stretch to say that those 100 trillion microbes living throughout your body are you because:
• They give you your identity:
• Through the gut-liver axis, the gut-muscle axis, and the gut-adipose axis, they control your metabolism.
• Through the gut-brain axis, they influence many aspects of your personality and mood.
• Via the gut-immune axis, they control not only your resistance to disease but also your rate of “inflam-aging,” or how fast you are aging relative to the ideal for your age.
• Truly, the human microbiome is proving to be vastly more important to our health than the human genome.
• Your intestinal microbiota also has a major impact on your hormone balance in two ways.
• First, it influences your liver’s processing and activation of hormones, including the sex hormones (estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone), plus thyroid hormone.
• Second, there is a direct link that researchers call the “guthypothalamus axis,” meaning that messages sent from your gut to your hypothalamus control the output of your pituitary and thus the production of other hormones.
What you undoubtedly realize is that in our world of devitalized food and environmental toxins, there is no way you can maintain a healthy intestinal microbiota, and thus a healthy and balanced immune system, hormonal system, and brain function, unless you take supplementation specifically to enhance your microbiota.
Another finding from current research is that supplementing with probiotics alone is not an effective way to develop normal intestinal microbiota in children or to restore it in adults. Prebiotics, either instead of or in addition to probiotics, are the only way to assure your health is maximized by supplementation.
Prebiotic + Probiotic = SYNBIOTIC
There is far more to supplementing with synbiotics than just throwing a random collection of bacteria species and indigestible fiber at your patients. The various probiotic species have different and even opposing influences on intestinal function, immune function, hormone balance, and on the brain. To maximize your benefits from synbiotic supplementation, you must understand the concept of specificity. You must appreciate that not all probiotic supplementation is good, and probiotic supplementation can even be extremely harmful.
To illustrate, many studies show that when children are supplemented with common probiotics, a substantial percentage of children actually develop wheezing and other upper respiratory distress, and many of them develop vari ous types of dermatitis. Those research findings probably surprise you because you are probably under the common misconception that probiotic supplementation is almost always at least a little beneficial and couldn’t possibly be harmful. Not so.
Are probiotics “bad” for children? Not at all. Children must not be given the wrong probiotics. In particular, Lactobacillus acidophilus, by far the most common probiotic used in ordinary supplements, is one of the major cul-
prits causing immune system distress in children, and can do so in adults as well. On the other hand, given the proper probiotics for their age and for the stage of development of their gastrointestinal tract and their immune system, children thrive on proper prebiotic and probiotic supplementation.
Do you appreciate what you need is not one all-purpose synbiotic product, but a menu of supplements from which you can choose the best combination of probiotic species for each individual patient?
"The farreaching benefits of probiotic and prebiotic supplementation reduce inflammation and prevent “inflam-aging”
Here is a test to see if you understand this concept of specificity supplementation designed to meet a specific person’s needs. If you are like a lot of people, you might think you want a synbiotic supplement that will make the immune system stronger.
Be careful what you wish for. Many of the most severe immune-related health problems are not associated with a weak immune system, but rather with an immune system that is too strong—too reactive. For example, most of the major autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, insulin-dependent diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and Crohn’s disease, are associated with an immune system that is much too strong and extremely overreactive, producing way too many inflammatory chemicals. Certain probiotic species that trigger immune activation are the absolute worst synbiotic for such individuals to take. What they need is a specific combination of probiotics that research shows will most effectively control the inflammation produced by their type of overreactive immune system.
At the other end of the health and disease spectrum are those whose immune systems critically do need a boost. These are the individuals with immune systems that are weak in the areas where the people who need immune control are strong. These people overproduce an entirely different set of immune factors, which predisposes them to such conditions as chronic yeast infections, allergies, and asthma. These individuals, if they supplement with immune-suppressing bacteria species, experience the same reaction as the children who develop wheezing and rashes in response to probiotic supplementation— symptoms could get worse instead of better.
Clearly, you will get the best return for every dollar you spend on your health if you choose the synbiotic supplement that most specifically meets the needs of each individual patient.
There is something else in addition to specificity that you must understand regarding the quality of probiotic supplements, though. The truth is that even the “highest quality” probiotics are a total waste of your money. You see, almost none of the critters that were originally put in the product are available to you when you take the supplement.
The best research to quantify the loss of probiotic viability shows that only 4% of the bacteria claimed on the label of probiotic supplements actually makes it to your intestinal tract. Fully 96% of the critters are no longer viable.
What happens to them? Most of them are lost just while the product sits on the shelf. The shelf life of most probiotic critters is a couple of months at best, so if you buy a product that is more than a couple of months from the date it was made, you are already getting less than half of what you think you are getting. Most of the critters that are still viable when you swallow the capsule or tablet are then killed in your upper GI tract by stomach acid and bile. Again, only 4% actually make it onto the tennis court, pitifully impotent to do anything for your health (even assuming the probiotic supplement had high-quality critters to start with). Sadly, 96 cents out of every dollar you spend is wasted, while at the same time you are given a false sense of security that you are doing something good for your health.
You need synbiotic products with none of the deficiencies of typical probiotic supplements. These products must contain only the bacteria species with a) the highest stability in regards to shelf life, and b) the highest resistance to stomach acid. Then, to assure even greater viability of the critters, the capsules must be made with the most advanced time-release technology. The capsules must be protected in such a way to even further maximize shelf life, and even more importantly, delay the release of the capsule contents until after it has passed through the stomach acid and bile of the upper GI tract.
The research is undeniable. The far-reaching benefits of probiotic and prebiotic supplementation reduce inflammation and prevent “inflam-aging” more directly, more powerfully, and more comprehensively than any other supplements you currently use. You absolutely must consider the human microbiome in your dedication to helping your patients “live stronger longer.”
Guy R. Schenker, DC, is the founder of NUTRI-SPEC, which has served chiropractors and other healthcare professionals interested in clinical nutrition since 1984. NUTRI-SPEC offers metabolic testing procedures, allowing doctors to determine the specific metabolic imbalances underlying each individual patients symptomatic complaints. NUTRISPEC provides supplement formulations specifically designed to meet the needs of those metabolic imbalances.
He can be contacted at NUTRI-SPEC at (800) 736-4320 and at [email protected]. Find more information on the NUTRI-SPEC website at www.nutri-spec.net.
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