INSIDE YOUR GUT

To begin my expedition into healing the symptoms of my autoimmune disease naturally, I had to do a lot of research on the gut and how it affects your health. Your gut is not just your belly or your waistline, it’s the gateway to the health of your brain and immune system. Two thousand years ago, Hippocrates – the ancient Greek physician – said, “All disease begins in the gut.” It seems that now more than ever we should listen to this advice and look at the source of many of our health issues – the gut.

Hippocrates is known as the father of medicine, but modern-day medicine has drastically swayed from his concept, focusing on treatments rather than causes. While Hippocrates’ message has been devastatingly overlooked for centuries, current research is beginning to point to the truth and depth of his simple idea. In fact, many researchers are beginning to say that supporting gut health and restoring the integrity of the gut barrier will be one of the most important goals of medicine in the twenty-first century.

The world within your gut involves a multifaceted, interconnected, interdependent relationship between living organisms called microflora. Microflora is the complex, diverse group of microorganism species that live in your digestive tract. These organisms, also referred to as gut flora, are most easily understood as fitting into the categories of either “good bacteria” or “bad bacteria.”

“Good” or “friendly bacteria” perform a multitude of tasks within your body, but their common responsibilities include working to regulate the gut by neutralizing some of the toxic by-products of your digestion; preventing the growth of harmful, pathogenic bacteria; controlling your metabolism; reducing harmful substances such as carcinogens and toxins; gleaning and absorbing energy, nutrients and fatty acids from the foods you eat; recycling hormones; training the immune system; and communicating with your brain.

“Bad bacteria” are microbes capable of causing disease in the body by producing infection and increasing cancer risk. Research has found that the presence of particular harmful bacteria in mice leads to overeating, metabolic damage and insulin resistance, highlighting a possible connection between bad bacteria and obesity and other weight disorders.

Researchers are finding out more and more about the important role of gut flora in overall health. Dysregulation of gut flora has been linked to the development of a range of illnesses, from autism and depression to autoimmune conditions such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and type 1 diabetes.

A healthy balance of gut flora is approximately 85 percent good bacteria and 15 percent bad bacteria. However, our modern diet – which is high in sugar, carbohydrates, preservatives and additives – is the perfect breeding ground for overgrowth of bad bacteria that will kill off your healthy gut flora very quickly.

Other causes of this imbalance include modern medicines such as antibiotics, and drinking tap water, which contains chemicals including fluoride and chlorine that also kill off your good bacteria. If you suffer from acne, low energy, digestive problems or low immunity, chances are you have a gut-flora imbalance that needs to be rectified.

Current research by senior scientists at the American Gut Project in Colorado is investigating feces samples from a wide variety of people from around the world to match up their particular ecological community of gut microorganisms (called the microbiome or microbiota) with specific diseases. The hypothesis is that the human microbiome may be implicated in autoimmune diseases such as diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis and fibromyalgia.