Dysfunctional gut microbiata linked to heart disease, cancer, diabetes
A new understanding of the essential role of gut microbes in the immune system may hold the key to dealing with some of the more significant health problems facing people in the world today.
Challenges Associated with Dysfunctional Gut Microbiata
Problems ranging from autoimmune disease to clinical depression and simple obesity may in fact be linked to immune dysfunction that begins with a “failure to communicate” in the human gut. Health care of the future may include personalized diagnosis of an individual’s “microbiome” to determine what prebiotics or probiotics are needed to provide balance.
Take the Necessary Precautions
Appropriate sanitation such as clean water and sewers are good. But some erroneous lessons in health care may need to be unlearned — leaving behind the fear of dirt, the love of antimicrobial cleansers, and the outdated notion that an antibiotic is always a good idea. We live in a world of “germs” and many of them are good for us.
The human gut plays a huge role in immune function. Our intestines contain more immune cells than the entire rest of our body. An emerging theory of disease, is a disruption in the “crosstalk” between the microbes in the human gut and other cells involved in the immune system and metabolic processes. In a healthy person, these microbes in the gut stimulate the immune system as needed, and it in turn talks back. There’s an increasing disruption of these microbes from modern lifestyle, diet, overuse of antibiotics and other issues. With that disruption, the conversation is breaking down.
An explosion of research in the field of genomic sequencing is for the first time allowing researchers to understand some of this conversation and appreciate its significance. The results are surprising, with links that lead to a range of diseases, including coeliac disease and inflammatory bowel disease. Obesity may be related. And some studies have found relevance to depression, late-onset autism, allergies, asthma and cancer.
Nutritional Therapy always looks at gut function and it is extremely common for nutritional therapists to recommend having a Gut Health Profile (of CDSA) done to assess the health of the gut and the microbiome.