Browse: Home / Bacteria / Don’t let your gut bacteria eat you out of house and home

Menu

Skip to content
  • About
  • Better Body Chemistry School
  • Book a health conversation
  • Speaking query
  • The “Big” Spoons
Header image

BBC

Small things can make a big difference to your health

advertisement

Menu

Skip to content
  • Home
  • Free Resources
    • 31 days to Better Body Chemistry
    • Willpower Report
    • Weight loss e-course
    • Better Body Chemistry for Expecting Moms
    • The ups and downs of insulin resistance
    • Candy Floss Boards
    • Weight tracker
    • Sound bites
  • Library
  • Shop
  • Lucky dip
  • Buy me a coffee
  • Video gallery
  • Contact

Don’t let your gut bacteria eat you out of house and home

Posted by Dr Sandy on in Bacteria | 559 Views | Leave a response
WhatsApp
Reddit
Share
More
Tweet
Pin
Share

Share Button

Click to listen to the audio…

Why you need to eat your vegetables to be healthy

bacteria eating gut cell lining

When a gut bacteria can’t find something fibrous to chew, it will just eat something else. Good for the bacteria, but potentially dangerous for you !

If you’ve got a teenage son or two, in the house – you know just how challenging it can be to keep the pantry stocked.

They seem to always be hungry.

Whatever you dish up is CONSUMED in a jiffy and then, they’re looking for more.

But a couple of teenagers is nothing….

A trillion for dinner

Every day, you’re expected to feed all of your own cells, plus a trillion or so gut bacteria. This is challenging in and of itself, but…….

just like teenage boys, gut bacteria CAN EAT.

And there is a trillion of them !

 So what do gut bacteria eat ?

It depends.

Some are really fussy and some will eat, whatever is going.

Thankfully the fuss pots are in the minority.

When many gut resident finds their favourite, favourite, missing,  they make a quick adjustment to their gene expression patterns and start eating  something else.

Good for the gut bacteria, but potentially NOT SO GOOD for you !

This is what a group of researchers discovered, when they switched up the diet of a bunch of bacteria.

The bunch of bacteria

Were a select group of critters.

The typical human gut, has up to a 1000 species of bacteria – keeping tabs on so many bacteria, all at the same time, is pretty close to impossible, so the researchers made it easier.

They handpicked 14 types of bacteria for their study.

The bacteria included a few fuss pots and some generalists.   At the end of the day, the researchers  verified  their pack of 14, could munch their way through anything thrown at them.

Next they put the pack of 14 to work, by transferring them into the digestive tracts of gnobiotic mice.  These are mice that have been specially bred to have NO bacteria living in their digestive tracts.

Feeding the 14

Once the bacteria had set up home in the mice, the researchers switched up the animal’s diet.

Mice were fed

  • A high fibre diet, which was a minimally processed grain and plant based diet
  • A fibre free diet, which was processed in such a way, to provide the same amount of carbs, fats and proteins, as the high fibre diet, but with none of the fibre
  • A prebiotic diet, which was the fibre free diet, with a selection of fibres added to it, kind of like a prebiotic formulation you might buy

The fate of the 14 was then monitored for 40 days and nights…..

A fibre free diet caused hunger

For a few fuss pots.

But, the go with the flow bacteria – quickly adapted.

When the fibre was MISSING,  the plan B food was  “bum” cream.   I know, I know – it doesn’t sound too appetising.

But, it’s a homemade i.e. human made, food source, so it’s ALWAYS available……

“Bum” cream for gut cells

Just like the cream smeared on baby’s butt, to keep the water out, “bum” cream, officically referred to as mucin, is smeared on the cells lining the gut, to keep things out, most notably, bacteria.

Mucin is edible….

In fact, there are a few fuss pots, like Akkermansia muciniphila, that ONLY eat mucin.

But for most gut bacteria, it is not preferred, food source,  but ….

When there is nothing else – eat mucin

The team observed, that when there was no fibre, several species of bacteria, such as Bacteroides caccae, opted to eat mucin.

So what ?

Well mucin supplies are finite.

When bacteria that don’t usually eat it, tuck in, it doesn’t take too long for the overall levels to drop.  The net result…………………. a thinner mucous layer.

A thinner mucous layer

This can be seen here…

graph showing mucin levels on different diets

Graph showing thickness of the mucous layer in mice, eating different diets. Adapted from original journal article (copyright 2016 Elsevier Inc.)

That’s quite a big difference…………….

Interestingly, and somewhat surprisingly,  supplementing with prebiotics, didn’t actually help.  The team think it’s because there just isn’t enough of these “fibres” to satisfy the bacteria’s veracious appetite.

Less mucous more vulnerable

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out, when the mucus layer is thinner, the gut lining is more vulnerable.

  • To infections
  • To damage and inflammation

Which is why, you want to eat your vegetables !

Carbohydrates in the form of natural complex plant fibre is what bacteria LOVE to eat.   Feeding them what they love, will keep them satisfied……… so they don’t eat you out of house and home.

Share Button

A Dietary Fiber-Deprived Gut Microbiota Degrades the Colonic Mucus Barrier and Enhances Pathogen Susceptibility. Cell (2016) 167 : 339–1353.  Mahesh S. Desai,  Anna M. Seekatz, Nicole M. Koropatkin, Nobuhiko Kamada, Christina A. Hickey, Mathis Wolter, Nicholas A. Pudlo, Sho Kitamoto, Nicolas Terrapon, Arnaud Muller, Vincent B. Young, Bernard Henrissat,  Paul Wilmes, Thaddeus S. Stappenbeck,  Gabriel Nunez, and Eric C. Martens.

Further reading

fat rat cookbook

A high fat diet can make you fat, but the fat is not the reason

If you want to make a mouse fat, just feed it MORE FAT. But fat is now not supposed to make you fat, so what gives ? These high fat diets are missing something

gut bacteria pinning granny smith apple

An apple a day only keeps the doctor away, if it’s a Granny Smith Apple

Granny Smith apples contain lots of UNDIGESTIBLE BITS, and it is the UNDIGESTIBLE BITS that matter, they encourage “skinny” bacteria to move into your colon

IAP picking up endotoxin

I am at risk of type 2 diabetes – give me more IAP please

Endotoxin, a bacterial waste product is partly to blame for the inflammation of obesity, but why is it accumulating ? There is a lack of IAP to clean it up.

 

Want to create BETTER BODY CHEMISTRY to optimize your health ?

WhatsApp
Reddit
Share
More
Tweet
Pin
Share
Posted in Bacteria | Tagged fibre, gut, gut lining, hungry, inflammation, leaky gut, microflora, mucin, mucous, prebiotic, teenager, vegetables

Connect with us

facebook you tube pinterest 40 google plus 40 Linkedin

FEELING….

sign posts then you need better body chemistry.

Grab our free E-course

“31 days to better body chemistry”

The advice is simple to follow and based on REAL science, not hype

Need more information ? Click here

  • Popular
  • Featured
  • Recent
  • asprosin the sugar plum fairy

    Why sugar levels are high despite NOT eating

    20746 views / Posted
  • poop getting stuck

    The fix for constipation is to go on a low fibre diet

    19893 views / Posted
  • oatmeal breakfast being beaten by egg

    Which is a better breakfast, egg or oatmeal ?

    19178 views / Posted
  • chewing gum relieving postoperative ileus

    A stick of chewing gum gets the gut going after surgery

    16755 views / Posted
  • carbonated water bubbles fill you up

    Fizzing up the water flattens your appetite

    15593 views / Posted
  • sun extracting cholesterol

    Make sure you have your “annual” check-up in the summer time

    / Dr Sandy
  • sending your kid to bootcamp won't stop childhood obesity

    Moving more won’t stop your kid from getting fat

    / Dr Sandy
  • cholesterol at the scene of the accident

    Bone cells are stiffening up your arteries not cholesterol

    / Dr Sandy
  • brain size the problem in ADHD

    Are kids with ADHD just acting according to their brain age

    / Dr Sandy
  • plastering the blood vessel with calcium

    Calcium supplements are building bones and breaking hearts

    / Dr Sandy
  • nose feeling blocked

    A simple “cure” for chronic sinusitis

    / Dr Sandy
  • triglyceride sweeping up sugar

    Dietary fat and carbs DO MIX in a “good” way

    / Dr Sandy
  • what would batman eat

    Batman can rescue your child from poor food choices

    / Dr Sandy
  • grape shooting fat at a man eating grapes on the couch

    The inconvenient truth about eating more fruit to be healthy

    / Dr Sandy
  • beta cell asking for a dopamine hit

    The dopamine hit your beta cells need to function at their best

    / Dr Sandy

RSS Recent posts

Dr Sandy Dr Sandy Evans, PhD

Located in Johannesburg, South Africa

Disclaimer : The stories and articles are provided as a service. Dr Sandy's opinions are for information only, and are not intended to diagnose or prescribe. For your specific diagnosis and treatment, consult your doctor or health care provider.
 

Book an appointment

Calendar icon
 

Connect with Dr Sandy

facebook 40
you tube 40
pinterest 40
linkedin 40
 

Categories

Featured posts

  • asprosin the sugar plum fairy

    Why sugar levels are high despite NOT eating

    20746 views / Posted
  • poop getting stuck

    The fix for constipation is to go on a low fibre diet

    19893 views / Posted
  • oatmeal breakfast being beaten by egg

    Which is a better breakfast, egg or oatmeal ?

    19178 views / Posted
 

©2011-2022 Spoonful of Science

Menu

  • Meet Dr Sandy
  • Disclosure/disclaimer
  • Privacy policy
  • Comment policy
  • Contact
WhatsApp
Reddit
Share
More
Tweet