How to water the microflora?

Intestinal bacteria love coffee and drink

Kirill Stasevich, "Science and Life"

Our health largely depends on who lives inside us – we are talking now, of course, about the notorious gastrointestinal microflora. It affects the immune system, metabolism, and even, according to some reports, higher nervous activity. It is believed that good bacteria help us avoid obesity and diabetes, while bad ones, on the contrary, spoil metabolism and even cause immune disorders.

Naturally, doctors and biologists are doing their best to understand what affects the composition of the intestinal microflora. First of all, it is, of course, food – but, in addition, our bacteria can be affected by diseases that we suffer from or have had in the past, and lifestyle, and various non-food substances that enter our body, from antibiotics to drugs.

Recently, researchers from the Catholic University of Leuven published the results of a large-scale study in which they tried to bring together factors affecting the balance between different types of microbes living in the gastrointestinal tract (World's first population-level microbiome study reveals links between lifestyle and gut flora).

Jeroen Raes and his colleagues analyzed the microflora of almost 4,000 residents of the United States, Great Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands, adding to them for comparison data obtained from those living in Papua New Guinea, Peru and Tanzania.

In total, it was possible to identify at least 664 genera of bacteria, of which 14 were universal for almost all people: they were in 95% of the samples, and the species included in these 14 genera account for 72% of the total bacterial diversity of the microflora. The "personal" species composition of microorganisms is different for each of us, but such differences are manifested mainly within the same 14 main genera.

It is believed that the more diverse the microflora, the better for the host. In an article in Science (Falony et al., Population-level analysis of gut microbiome variation), the authors describe 126 factors that affect bacterial diversity. Most of them are dietary: for example, if a person eats a lot of fruits, vegetables and yoghurts, then it is good for his bacteria – and therefore for himself.

The fact that fruits and vegetables help to properly adjust the microflora can be heard quite often, so in this case the new results are consistent with earlier work. However, in addition, it turned out that tea, coffee and wine have a good effect on bacteria, from which the diversity of microbes again increases.

Carbohydrate food, as well as chips, popcorn and other "cookies", coupled with sugary drinks, predictably turned out to be harmful to the microflora, but whole milk also unexpectedly got into the same row. However, the researchers stipulate that they are only stating the connection between the bacterial composition and the diet – to understand exactly how coffee or wine stimulate the growth of microbes, detailed experiments will be needed.

As for medicinal and medical factors, it is safe to say that the diversity of bacteria is influenced, of course, by antibiotics, as well as osmotic laxatives, benzodiazepines, antidepressants, antihistamines and hormonal drugs, and some others.

But in some cases, the results were not at all what could be expected. For example, many believe that the composition of the microflora is strongly influenced by how a person was born, in the usual way or by caesarean section.

However, a new study found no difference between the two: if the "method of birth" somehow affects bacteria, then with age, obviously, everything is overlapped by other factors. The same thing, by the way, turned out about breastfeeding – although it is believed that those who were breastfed, the microflora becomes more diverse, no evidence of this has now been found.

It is too early to give specific clinical recommendations from the results obtained, and the researchers themselves pursued other goals – they did not so much want to make sure once again that the microflora depends on diet, as to understand how different external and internal factors determine its condition.

If we do not talk about individual types of microorganisms, not about how a particular bacterium reacts to yogurt or an antidepressant, but try to assess the variability of the entire diversity as a whole, then the new results are certainly a step forward, but the authors themselves emphasize that they managed to explain only 7% of the variations in bacterial diversity.

In order to describe the gastrointestinal ecosystem as a whole, it is necessary to analyze its species composition in several tens of thousands of people. That is, there is a huge amount of work to be done, but otherwise we simply will not be able to find an "individual approach" to such an important microflora for us.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  12.05.2016