Friday

Is THIS causing allergies, asthma, obesity & disruption of appetite hormones?

As you've probably noticed, I've been researching quite a bit lately about all of the various functions of our gut flora (good bugs and bad bugs in our guts), and all of the dramatic effects to our health, including our weight, skin conditions, brain health, asthma, allergies, digestion issues, and frequent sickness.

Last week, I talked about some of the fascinating research showing differences in gut flora populations between obese and slender people.

Today, I found a few more nuggets that I wanted to share with you that are really interesting... It's a couple more excerpts from the super-interesting new book I've been reading by Michael Pollan called Cooked, and it tells a lot about the importance of our "microbiome" in our guts:

First, Pollan talks about how the diversity and health of our gut flora starts all the way back to birth... He talks about how natural child birth exposes the baby to it's first blast of beneficial bacteria that immediately begin to colonize the baby's body (an important part of building their immune system from day 1) ...
He continues, "Children born by Cesarian Section, a far more hygienic process, take much longer to populate their intestinal tract, and never acquire quite the same assortment of bugs. Some researchers believe this could help explain the higher rates of allergies, asthma, and obesity observed in children born by Cesarian".

He then goes on to explain the results of a study of 15,000 children in 5 European countries, which basically concluded that children who grew up on farms and were exposed to more microorganisms from dirt, livestock, etc had more robust immune systems and had lower rates of allergic diseases.  The study also mentioned that children in Waldorf schools who ate more fermented vegetables and received fewer antibiotics and fever-reducing drugs also had better immune systems and lower rates of disease.

And it gets even MORE interesting, as Pollan continues:

"The average child in the developed world has also received between ten and twenty courses of antiobiotics before his or her 18th birthday, an assault on the microflora the implications of which researchers are just beginning to reckon.

Consider the saga of the once-common stomach bacteria Helicobacter pylori.  Long considered the pathogen responsible for causing peptic ulcers, the bacterium was routinely attacked with antibiotics, and as a result has become rare -- today, less than 10% of American children test positive for H. pylori.  Only recently have researchers discovered it also plays a positive role in our health:  H. pylori helps regulate both stomach acid and ghrelin, one of the key hormones involved in appetite.  People who have been treated with antibiotics to eradicate the bacterium gain weight, possibly because the H. pylori is not acting to regulate their appetite."

Once again, this is yet more evidence that our health is being harmed by our overly sanitized modern world with hand sanitizers every where you look, a constant "war on bacteria" and a sterilized food supply that lacks the natural microbes food was meant to contain, and over-prescription of antibiotics by just about every single doctor for common colds and many other minor sicknesses that don't need antibiotics.

And as you can see, the dramatic reduction or eradication of H pylori in the guts of most people in the developed world these days is now being shown to be disrupting the hormones that regulate our appetite!

Check out this video below for some more shocking info on whether YOUR gut microbes are out of balance and making you gain weight, as well as digestion and immune problems:

Is YOUR gut overloaded with toxic gut microbes crowding out the good probiotics? (important stuff)


PS -- if you liked today's article, please fwd this email on to any of your friends, family, or co-workers that would enjoy it.


Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer

Sunday

Do you have "slender" gut microbes or "obese" gut bugs?

If you've been reading my newsletters for a while, then you know one of the biggest things I talk about is the importance of all those trillions of little "critters" in your gut (your probiotics, and the balance between good and bad bugs in your gut) that regulate so many important aspects of your health, including your immune system, digestion, your weight, and even brain health according to some recent studies.

After all, as you may have heard, we have 10x the amount of microbes in our body compared to the number of our own human cells in our body.  Clearly, those 100 trillion "bugs" in your body control a LOT about your health considering they outnumber our own cells 10 to 1.

Well, recently I've been reading the thought-provoking new book by Michael Pollan called Cooked, and I ran across this excerpt, which is important and fascinating:

"Indeed, the microbiota may play an important role in regulating our weight. It has long been known that feeding antibiotics to livestock makes them gain more weight on the same amount of feed, and though the mechanism has not been identified, intriguing new clues are emerging.  A group of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis discovered that the types of bacteria dominant in the gut of obese individuals (in both mice and humans) are very different from those found in slender people, and that the different species of gut bacteria metabolize food more or less efficiently. 

This suggests that the amount of energy we obtain from a given amount of food may vary depending on the kinds of microbes living in your gut.  So might changing the composition of our gut bacteria in turn change our weight?  Possibly: The researchers found that when they transferred bacteria from the gut of fat mice into germ-free mice, the germ-free mice gained nearly twice as much weight as when they received gut bacteria from skinny mice.  Other research has found that specific gut microbes, such as Helicobacter pylori (which are killed by antibiotics), play a role in regulating the hormones that control appetite."


As you can see, the irresponsible use of antibiotics in livestock in the last 50 years and also the over-prescription of antibiotics in humans for every little minor sickness has been devastating the guts of humans and possibly making us fat just like livestock fatten up with the use of antibiotics.

This excerpt also raises intriguing points about the importance of our gut probiotics in regulating our weight considering the information about different gut microbes in obese vs slender people.

Check out this video below for some more shocking info on whether YOUR gut microbes are out of balance and making you gain weight, as well as digestion and immune problems:

Is YOUR gut overloaded with toxic gut microbes crowding out the good probiotics? (important stuff)


PS -- if you liked today's article, please fwd this email on to any of your friends, family, or co-workers that would enjoy it.

Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer