Tag Archives: gut flora

Questions & Answers

A Cautionary Tale: Hospitals And Your Gut Flora

Just three days in the hospital can change the bacteria in your gut.

People who end up in the intensive care unit (ICU) can have a massive shift in the gut microbiota within 72 hours. Hundreds of species of bugs can be wiped out in a snap, and it can take months to years to recover.

I have clients who were on antibiotics for years. It’s hard to see the destruction of beneficial bacteria that goes on day after day.

Dr. Mark Pallen, a British microbial genomics researcher at the Quadram Institute, lead the research on the impact of an ICU admission on gut flora. I suspected that there would be an impact of hospitalization, but I was taken back at the scale of the change to the flora.

To assess the impact of intensive care treatment on the gut microbiome, the team tracked 24 people admitted to a hospital in Birmingham, UK, for trauma, heart attacks, cancer, and other emergencies. The tracking was done over 10 months and included people ages 25 to 85. Many of the patients were unconscious or sedated.

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After getting permission from family members, the research team looked at stool samples. They conducted DNA sequencing on the samples and found that over 75% of the patients experienced a significant reduction in microbial diversity during their ICU stay.

The most significant changes to the microbiome were associated with IV use.
The gut is normally an ecosystem in its own right. The gut is the foundation, the root, of our health. This part of the body determines overall health. Science has allowed us to understand just how important the human microbiota is to well-being.

Unfortunately, the conventional medical system has contributed to a great deal of destruction of the gut ecosystem. Is it any wonder why people end up sicker coming out of the hospital than when they went in the first place?

That’s why I’m so healthy. I don’t go to the hospital. Try and keep out of these places if you can, okay?

If you get pumped full of IV antibiotics, you may suffer it for years.

Another researcher, Joost Wiersinga from the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam, has this to say, “Medics should do more to minimize the disruption to gut bacteria.”
I agree 100%.

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Questions & Answers

Sleep And Gut Flora: What’s The Connection?

Recent research conducted on mice has demonstrated a significant effect on gut flora in response to sleep deprivation. The impact was particularly strong with circadian rhythm disruption, which would be similar to shift work.

In the same study, intestinal permeability increased in response to sleep deprivation. The take-home message is that if you want a healthy bowel flora, you need to have a good sleep.
Sleep, or the lack thereof, is linked with several different health problems. So, it’s no surprise that sleep deprivation has also been linked to alterations in the gut flora and intestinal permeability.

My recommendation for people who do shift work is always, try and get out of that crazy situation. If you can’t avoid doing shift work, you find a way to ensure that you get sufficient sleep on a daily basis.

Further readings:

For those people working irregular hours for the long-term, I recommend having periodic stool analyses. The stool tests will document changes to gut flora over time.
Genova diagnostic offers a good stool test, which shows all the different types of classes of gut bacteria.

The answer to the question of whether sleep deprivation has an effect on the gut micro biodynamic is a resounding, “Yes!”.

No doubt, over time, there will be even more studies that validate this finding. Hopefully, research will be able to tell us which strains of bacteria are being affected and the subsequent impact on human health.

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Questions & Answers

How Your Gut Flora Can Improve Your Health

The Gut Health World Summit is a conference that highlights the latest in microbiota research.
This conference always highlights interesting findings. One of the recent presentations was about a new glycoprotein called P-glycoprotein.

P-glycoprotein helps stop the infiltration of neutrophils (white blood cells) into the gut. Certain antibiotics destroy the bacteria that produce glycoprotein, opening the door for increased gut inflammation.

This is an example of the research that validates my concerns about antibiotic use. I suspect that research like this will help experts design antibiotics that are better than the loose cannons that are currently available. We need to get a lot better at placing antibiotics exactly where they need to be, so they cause minimal collateral damage to beneficial bacteria.

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Other interesting research from this conference focused on the gut health of mice. When mice are given prebiotics, it stops their gut from being damaged by radiation exposure. Mice given prebiotics had better bowel flora and suffered a lot less damage than mice who not given prebiotics. This research again demonstrates how important it is to have good numbers of beneficial gut flora.

It’s essential to keep an eye on the research about gut flora as it helps inform decisions about diet, supplements, and lifestyle choices that are gut-healthy.

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