Gut Bacteria Diversity Is Vital for Well-Being

If you’re not at all familiar with biology, you might freak out a little when hearing that your body is home to a wide variety of germs, microbes, and bacteria. These microscopic organisms call pretty much every recess of your body ‘home’, from the surface-dwelling bacteria responsible for body odor to the microbes living in your stomach lining.

And speaking of these bowel dwellers, there is a whole community of life forms living in your stomach and intestines, a community that is very easily disturbed by any alterations to your diet or by taking certain types of medicine. This can go either well or very poorly for the host bodies.

As you might expect, foods like fruits, vegetables, and particularly dairy do a very good job at keeping the bacteria in stomach lining healthy and fed, and so can drinks like coffee, tea, wine, and dairy products. But there also are those foods and drinks that damage these colonies of bacteria, causing us harm.

According to two different studies performed recently, gut bacteria diversity is vital for well-being. This is because the more types of useful bacteria you have in your gut microbiome, the more easily you can break down different foods and drinks, processing their nutrients and sending the waste to go on its way.

Also known as intestinal flora, gut bacteria is there to help break down the foods and drinks you ingest and to ensure their safe processing. Because of this, the microbiome is very sensitive to even the slightest alterations. Any sort of food, drinks, or medicine can drastically alter the status and spread of your gut bacteria.

It is generally accepted that the richer your gut microbiome, the better your stomach health gets. So of course, eating and drinking the wrong things is a potentially dangerous scenario. But what are these products that can reduce your gut microbes’ diversity, and thus your general well-being?

Well, sugar, particularly when in sodas, greatly reduces your gut bacteria diversity, as do high-fat foods and anything with a high enough number of carbohydrates. Referring to medicine, a single dose of antibiotics can mess up your gut microbiome for over a month, as can antacids, and even some diabetes medications.

Additionally, so as to show us that no harm comes by itself, smoking and having a heart attack can also have a greatly damaging effect on your gut bacteria. But exactly how many types of bacteria do we have inside of us, and just how are they more precisely helping?

The two studies, as well as other previous ones show that there are trillions of microorganisms living inside out gut, and they form the largest immune system in the body. They make sure that you don’t get sick after you eat something and that you process your food by breaking it down themselves. So, you should take good care of your gut bacteria if you want them to take good care of you.

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