Let’s Talk Gut Health: Part Two
Welcome back to part two of Gut Health and your Microbiome! To recap from part one, the big idea of this educational series is that your digestive tract is home to one of the most complicated ecosystems known to man: your microbiome. Your microbiome is the trillions of organisms in the form of bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi that are the (mostly) living parts of this complex network inhabiting our large intestine. This ecosystem is a hot area of research in the scientific community, especially as it pertains to whole-body health and the potential for disease susceptibility and manifestation.
So what makes a microbiome healthy or unhealthy? Although this science is evolving daily, a few common themes are beginning to arise. Most of these center on the idea that a healthy microbiome is populated by a wide range, or diverse amount, of bacterial species. A microbiome that has lost diversity or is imbalanced has been referred to as a dysbiotic microbiome. Dysbiosis is characterized by increased inflammatory activity produced by opportunistic or pathogenic bacteria, viruses, and protozoa that take up residence in your digestive tract and slowly change the local and distal environment. Symptoms of a dysbiotic microbiome include localized gastrointestinal symptoms of fullness after meals, bloating, excessive gas, and constipation or diarrhea or even more nebulous generalized symptoms of fatigue, headaches, or joint pains.
You may be wondering: are there things I am doing to harm the health and diversity of my microbiome? Below is an abbreviated list of potential contributors to an imbalanced microbiome in the form of what I will call Microbiome Disruptors. The purpose of this list is to bring some awareness to small areas of your own lifestyle or environment that you could tweak to promote the health of your digestive tract.
Microbiome Disruptors:
Highly Processed Foods made with hydrogenated vegetable oils: These foods are the common staples on our pantry shelves due to their portability and probable nature of calming hungry children down quickly. These are usually purchased from the interior of our grocery stores in the US and may look like foods such as neon colored cheese puffs, crackers shaped like cute little animals, and chips marketed as “healthy alternatives.” Beyond the chemicals and colorings added to these foods to keep them shelf stable for years (which themselves are microbiome disruptors), the hydrogenated vegetable oils such as canola oil and soybean oils are the major microbiome disruptors in this group of foods.
Chronic exposure to environmental chemicals such as those found in tap water or pesticides found on produce. Our tap water uses chemicals like chlorine to provide optimal sanitization—and thank goodness we live in a country where this is standard! It is important to take the next step and use a water filter to reduce the number of chemicals you can be exposed to in your local tap or well water. If you’re a bit skeptical about this notion, I encourage you to visit www.EWG.org to find out what is in your unfiltered tap water or take your well water to a testing site like this one (www.mytapscore.com) to learn what you are being exposed to on a daily basis that may be disrupting the health of your microbiome.
Artificial Sweeteners: Before you reach for your favorite diet soda or that little pink packet of fake sugar for your tea or coffee, I want you to stop and consider that these fake or alternative sugars have been linked directly to dysbiosis as well as other health conditions such as insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome.
Chronic Stress: Stress disrupts the microbiome in many ways in the body: from impacting the way we digest, break down, and absorb our foods, to even chronic stress itself playing a role in the inflammatory signaling of our microbiome of our digestive tract.
Overuse or repeated use of certain medications:
Antibiotics taken for prolonged periods of time (such as those prescribed for chronic acne or rosacea sufferers) or the repeated use of antibiotics for recurrent bacterial infections (such as recurrent sinusitis). Each of these scenarios can be a set-up to disrupt your microbiome through the killing of beneficial bacteria that live in your colon (I think of these good bacteria as innocent bystanders being eliminated by heavy duty artillery in the form of an antibiotic).
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs such as ibuprofen) taken on a regular and recurring basis have been linked to damage of the mucosal lining (the protective layer of our intestine) of the digestive tract and directly linked to inflammation and disruption of a healthy microbiome.
Stomach acid reducing medications such as proton pump inhibitors (PPIs such as Prilosec or Nexium) when taken for longer than clinically indicated. This can be detrimental because we need stomach acid to help us ward off infections from bacteria, viruses, and other protozoa that we may ingest in our food. You see, adequate stomach acid is one of our main defenses against food-borne illnesses. Additionally, one of the main functions of stomach acid is to digest (break apart) protein in our stomach and access the building blocks in the form of amino acids, vitamins and minerals that either make up or are bound up in the proteins we eat. When proteins, such as your chicken from lunch, go undigested, these large molecules pass from your stomach into your small intestine and can feed and fuel an unhealthy microbiome causing symptoms of bloating, fullness, and gas.
Each of these drugs has a time and place and specific role to fill in supporting our body to heal and recover from various diseases; HOWEVER, when you use these drugs, it is important to ask your doctor what the plan is to stop them at the end of the treatment protocol. In my years of practice, it was not an uncommon thing for me to find out that a patient had been on a medication to reduce stomach acid for years!
Here is my practical advice when it comes to digesting all of this information:
Knowledge is power and we must be thoughtful in how we approach all aspects of our health. Be mindful of the medications you take and if you are taking a prolonged course of antibiotics, acid blocking agents, or over the counter anti-inflammatories, make a plan to discuss with your healthcare provider how to support your microbiome during your treatment period. Becoming informed about the pros and cons of each of your medications will help you better advocate for your health in the long run.
Don’t panic if you have nutritional or lifestyle habits in place in your life that I mentioned that may be negatively contributing to the health of your microbiome. We are all human and need to give ourselves grace about our food and lifestyle choices. If you are interested in practical nutrition and lifestyle habits that you can take in your own life, feel free to follow Cornerstone Integrative Wellness on Facebook (Cornerstone Integrative Wellness) or Instagram (@cornerstoneintegrativewellness) or through our Cornerstone community emails. These are two great places where we will provide simple steps you can take to promote and support all aspects of your health, including your microbiome!
Take heart and do not give up hope! There are many ways to promote a healthy microbiome and we will discuss those in our next chapter in this series! Here is my ask of you: Do not race to the drugstore to purchase the most recent probiotic you saw in a commercial on television. Unfortunately, you won’t find the “perfect probiotic” or the silver bullet for gut health. While we do have a few “favorite” probiotics that we use with our clients in our practice, we like to look at gut health from a 360 degree perspective.
In our next installment in this series, we will discuss ways you can support your gut health and microbiome with practical tips and delicious recipes.
For references related to this article, please see Part 1 of this series.