Gut Bacteria Quotes

I'm really not looking to date anyone." I know people often say that when secretly looking for a romantic partner, but I mean it. I definitely felt attracted to some people, and I liked the idea of being with someone, but the actual mechanics of it didn't much suit my talents. Like, parts of typical romantic relationships that made me anxious included 1. Kissing; 2. Having to say the right things to avoid hurt feelings; 3. Saying more wrong things while trying to apologize; 4. Being at a movie theater together and feeling obligated to hold hands even after your hands become sweaty and the sweat starts mixing together; 5. The part where they say, "What are you thinking about?" And they want you to be, like, "I'm thinking about you, darling," but you're actually thinking about how cows literally could not survive if it weren't for the bacteria in their guts, and how that means that cows do not exist as independent life-forms, but that's not really something you can say out loud, so you're ultimately forced to choose between lying and seeming weird.

The gut is the seat of all feeling. Polluting the gut not only cripples your immune system, but also destroys your sense of empathy, the ability to identify with other humans. Bad bacteria in the gut creates neurological issues. Autism can be cured by detoxifying the bellies of young children. People who think that feelings come from the heart are wrong. The gut is where you feel the loss of a loved one first. It's where you feel pain and a heavy bulk of your emotions. It's the central base of your entire immune system. If your gut is loaded with negative bacteria, it affects your mind. Your heart is the seat of your conscience. If your mind is corrupted, it affects your conscience. The heart is the Sun. The gut is the Moon. The pineal gland is Neptune, and your brain and nervous system (5 senses) are Mercury. What affects the moon or sun affects the entire universe within. So, if you poison the gut, it affects your entire nervous system, your sense of reasoning, and your senses.

Thoughts are just a different kind of bacteria, colonizing you. I thought about the gut-brain information axis. Maybe you're already gone. The prisoners run the jail now. Not a person so much as a swarm. Not a bee, but the hive.

Almost nothing influences our gut bacteria as much as the food we eat. Preboiotics are the most powerful tool at our disposal if we want to support our good bacteria - that is, those that are already there and are there to stay.

More than 95 percent of the world’s bacteria are harmless to humans. Many are extremely beneficial. Disinfectants have no place in a normal household. They are appropriate only if a family member is sick or the dog poops on the carpet.

A growing number of studies have made a link between animal behavior and the trillions of bacteria and fungi that live in their guts, many of which produce chemicals that influence animal nervous systems. The interaction between gut microbes and brains—the “microbiome-gut-brain axis”—is far-reaching enough to have birthed a new field: neuromicrobiology.

There are more bacteria in your gut than stars in our galaxy.

these same chemicals found in the brain are also produced in the gut, and that their availability to the brain is largely governed by the activity of gut bacteria, we are forced to realize that ground zero for all things mood-related is the gut.

Escherichia colia O157:H7 is a relatively new strain of the common intestinal bacteria (no one had seen it before 1980) that thrives in feedlot cattle, 40 percent of which carry it in their gut. Ingesting as few as ten of these microbes can cause a fatal infection; they produce a toxin that destroys human kidneys.

New science reveals that exercise positively influences the gut’s balance of bacteria to favor colonies that prevent weight gain.

Good parasites are invisible; the best are indispensable. Gut bacteria, chloroplasts, mitochondria: all parasites, once.

Some ancient eukaryote swallowed a photosynthesizing bacteria and became a sunlight gathering alga. Millions of years later one of these algae was devoured by a second eukaryote. This new host gutted the alga, casting away its nucleus and its mitochondria, keeping only the chloroplast. That thief of a thief was the ancestor or Plasmodium and Toxoplasma. And this Russian-doll sequence of events explains why you can cure malaria with an antibiotic that kills bacteria: because Plasmodium has a former bacterium inside it doing some vital business.

Quit eating sugar. If you make one change to improve your gut health, make it this. Bad bacteria love sugar and feed off it.

Not only does fruit fight cancer, it kills all types of viruses and bacteria. Certain fruits, such as bananas, wild blueberries, apples, and papayas, are the most powerful natural destroyers of viruses on earth. Fruit is also vital to gut health—which is essential to a healthy immune system. For example, the pectin in apples, and the skin, pulp, and fiber in figs and dates, are exceptionally effective at killing and/or clearing out anything that doesn’t belong in your intestinal tract, including fungi such as Candida, worms, and other parasites.

The fact that changes in our gut affect our brain’s response to negativity or emotionally stirring images is just mind-boggling. But it’s also empowering. It means that what we put in our mouths and how we feed our gut bacteria do indeed affect our brain’s functionality. IT

they say, “What are you thinking about?” And they want you to be, like, “I’m thinking about you, darling,” but you’re actually thinking about how cows literally could not survive if it weren’t for the bacteria in their guts, and how that sort of means that cows do not exist as independent life-forms, but that’s not really something you can say out loud,

Children born by caesarean section take months or even longer to develop a normal population of gut bacteria.

Ozone therapy is also more effective than antibiotics and is highly preferable because it kills bacteria without wiping out your beneficial gut bacteria or taxing your immune system.

It allows the team to culture the many gut bacteria that are extremely intolerant of the gas. "If you write the word oxygen on a piece of paper and show it to these bugs, they'll die," jokes Gordon.

A top source of elevated microorganisms is sprouts. Alfalfa, broccoli, clover, fenugreek, lentil, mustard, sunflower, kale, and other seeds like them, when sprouted, are living micro-gardens. In this tiny, nascent form of life, they’re teeming with beneficial bacteria that will help your gut thrive.

The aim of cleaning, then, should be to reduce bacteria numbers—but not to zero. Even harmful bacteria can be good for us when the immune system uses them for training. A couple of thousand Salmonella bacteria in the kitchen sink are a chance for our immune system to do a little sightseeing. They become dangerous only when they turn up in greater numbers. Bacteria get out of hand when they encounter the perfect conditions: a protected location that is warm and moist with a supply of delicious food.

Those people who post pictures of their dinner on Facebook, only to be disappointed by the lack of “likes” from friends, are simply trying to appeal to the wrong audience. If there were such a thing as Facebug (Facebook for microbes!), a picture of your dinner would provoke an excited response from millions of users—and shudders of disgust from millions more. The menu changes daily: useful milk digesters contained in a cheese sandwich, armies of Salmonella bacteria hiding in a delicious dish of tiramisu.

Okay, but what about microbial disease? “To declare war on ninety-nine percent of bacteria when less than one percent of them threaten our health makes no sense. Many of the bacteria we’re killing are our protectors.” In fact, the twentieth-century war on bacteria—with its profligate use of antibiotics, and routine sterilization of food—has undermined our health by wrecking the ecology of our gut. “For the first time in human history, it has become important to consciously replenish our microflora.” Hence the urgency of cultural revival. And

the part where they say, "what are you thinking about?" And they want you to be, like, "I'm thinking about you, darling," but you're actually thinking about how cows literally could not survive if it weren't for the bacteria in their guts, and how that sort of means that cows do not exist as independent life-forms, but that's not really something you can say out loud, so you're ultimately forced to choose between lying and seeming weird.

Probiotics and Prebiotics If you’re suffering from gut-induced depression, how do you reset your gut microbiome to steer you back to a healthy mental state? The key is to increase probiotics and prebiotics in your diet. Probiotics are live bacteria that convey health benefits when eaten. Probiotic-rich foods contain beneficial bacteria that help your body

Hold in, hold in, one crack and the wall is breached. I need now to be finite, self-contained, to stop this bacterial grief dividing and multiplying till its weight is the weight of the world. Bacteria: agents of putrefaction. My father's decay lodged in me.

The fact that changes in our gut affect our brain's response to negativity or emotionally stirring images is just mind-boggling. But it's also empowering. It means that what we put in our mouths and how we feed our gut bacteria do indeed affect our brain's functionality.

Now the best thinking is that the appendix serves as a reservoir for gut bacteria. About one person in every sixteen in the developed world will suffer appendicitis at some point, enough to make it the most common cause of emergency surgery. Without surgery, many appendicitis victims would die.

The famously pungent Limburger cheese is made from the same bacteria that many people have between their toes (Brevibacteria linens), the ones that cause smelly feet.

Some bacteria are more or less permanent residents; they form long-lasting colonies.

A glass or two of red wine may be good for your heart but not for your microbiome. Studies show that just one drink per day in women and two in men can induce dysbiosis and bacterial overgrowth. Levels of good bacteria like Lactobacillus fall, while potential pathogens rise, leading to an increase in toxins and other chemicals that can cause inflammation, damage the liver, and increase permeability of the gut. Most of the overgrowth happens in the small intestine and can lead to malnourishment because the excess bacteria consume the nutrients that the small intestine would normally absorb. Some studies report an incidence of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) in alcoholics that’s three times that of the general population.

Outer space is fucking terrifying. I’m thankful for the ozone layer and the gravitational pull of the moon and whatnot, but they’d have to tie me like a spit-roasted pig to send me out there. The universe keeps expanding and getting colder, chunks of our galaxy are sucked away, black holes hurl through space at millions of miles per hour, and solar superstorms flare up at the drop of a hat. Meanwhile NASA astronauts are out there in their frankly inadequate suits, drinking liters of their own recycled urine, getting alligator skin on the top of their feet, and shitting rubber balls that float around at eye level. Their cerebrospinal fluid expands and presses on their eyeballs to the point that their eyesight deteriorates, their gut bacteria are a shitshow—no pun intended—and gamma rays that could literally pulverize them in less than a second wander around. But you know what’s even worse? The smell. Space smells like a toilet full of rotten eggs, and there’s no escape. You’re just stuck there until Houston allows you to come back home. So believe me when I say: I’m grateful every damn day for those two extra inches.

We must have horses and dogs and cats and other animals in our lives in order for our psyches to function as they should, just as we have to have bacteria in our guts in order to digest food.

They all knew it was gallows humor. There would be babies born to thirteen-year-olds who would show up at the clinic with "stomachaches." Backs and shoulders wrenched, wrists damaged, knees torn at the kapok factory. Hands opaline with infected cuts, gone bad from the bacteria and toxins in the offal at the fish-processing plant. Sepsis, diabetes, melanomas, botched abortions, asthma, TB, malnutrition, STDs. Liquor and drugs and hopelessness and rage pounded deep into the gut. "The poor you will always have with you," Jesus said. A warning, Emilio wondered, or an indictment?

ARE BACTERIA CONTROLLING YOUR BRAIN? IT SEEMS ABSURD! Bacteria are so ridiculously tiny that you could fit a thousand of them into a single human cell. And yet, microbes seem to have superpowers.

it’s interesting to note that those who don’t have any bacteria in their gut have problems with anxiety, locomotion, depression, and altered brain development. The implications of these findings are enormous.

As we’ve already touched on, food’s most profound effect on the brain is through its impact on your gut bacteria. Some foods promote the growth of helpful bacteria, while others inhibit this growth. Because of that effect, food is some of the most potent mental health medicine available, with dietary interventions sometimes achieving similar results to specifically engineered pharmaceuticals, at a fraction of the price and with few if any side effects.

Whether one calls slime molds, fungi, and plants “intelligent” depends on one’s point of view. Classical scientific definitions of intelligence use humans as a yardstick by which all other species are measured. According to these anthropocentric definitions, humans are always at the top of the intelligence rankings, followed by animals that look like us (chimpanzees, bonobos, etc.), followed again by other “higher” animals, and onward and downward in a league table—a great chain of intelligence drawn up by the ancient Greeks, which persists one way or another to this day. Because these organisms don’t look like us or outwardly behave like us—or have brains—they have traditionally been allocated a position somewhere at the bottom of the scale. Too often, they are thought of as the inert backdrop to animal life. Yet many are capable of sophisticated behaviors that prompt us to think in new ways about what it means for organisms to “solve problems,” “communicate,” “make decisions,” “learn,” and “remember.” As we do so, some of the vexed hierarchies that underpin modern thought start to soften. As they soften, our ruinous attitudes toward the more-than-human world may start to change. The second field of research that has guided me in this inquiry concerns the way we think about the microscopic organisms—or microbes—that cover every inch of the planet. In the last four decades, new technologies have granted unprecedented access to microbial lives. The outcome? For your community of microbes—your “microbiome”—your body is a planet. Some prefer the temperate forest of your scalp, some the arid plains of your forearm, some the tropical forest of your crotch or armpit. Your gut (which if unfolded would occupy an area of thirty-two square meters), ears, toes, mouth, eyes, skin, and every surface, passage, and cavity you possess teem with bacteria and fungi. You carry around more microbes than your “own” cells. There are more bacteria in your gut than stars in our galaxy. For humans, identifying where one individual stops and another starts is not generally something we

imported this probiotic, which is called LKM512, from Japan, and now I have friendly bacteria in my gut producing plenty of spermidine for me. No more bad-tasting spermidine to swallow, and there’s a good chance I’ll live longer as a result!

Bowel transit time, as it is known in the trade, is a very personal thing and varies widely between individuals, and in fact within individuals depending on how active they are on a given day and what and how much they have been eating. Men and women evince a surprising amount of difference in this regard. For a man, the average journey time from mouth to anus is fifty-five hours. For a woman, typically, it is more like seventy-two. Food lingers inside a woman for nearly a full day longer, with what consequences, if any, we do not know. Roughly speaking, however, each meal you eat spends about four to six hours in the stomach, a further six to eight hours in the small intestine, where all that is nutritious (or fattening) is stripped away and dispatched to the rest of the body to be used or, alas, stored, and up to three days in the colon, which is essentially a large fermentation tank where billions and billions of bacteria pick over whatever the rest of the intestines couldn’t manage—fiber mostly. That’s why you are constantly told to eat more fiber: because it keeps your gut microbes happy and at the same time, for reasons not well understood, reduces the risk of heart disease, diabetes, bowel cancer, and indeed death of all types.

Humans are actually reservoir hosts for countless bacteria and viruses that haven’t even been classified yet. About twenty percent of the genetic information in the nose doesn’t match any known or cataloged organism. In the gut, forty to fifty percent of all the DNA is from bacteria and viruses that have never been classified. Even in the blood, up to two percent is a sort of “biological dark matter.” In many ways, this biological dark matter, this sea of unknown viruses and bacteria, is the ultimate frontier.

EATING THE RAINBOW When you start eating differently, your microbiome will start changing within two to three days. Getting five different vegetables into your diet every single day will accelerate the process of optimizing your microbiome. To enhance the benefits even further, try to make these vegetables as many different colors as you can. This means it’s much more likely that you will encourage the growth of more beneficial bacteria as well as getting maximum gut-bug diversity. But that’s not the only benefit.

Mindful yogurt manufacturers often use bacteria that produce more dextrorotatory (right-turning) than levorotatory (left-turning) lactic acids. Molecules of the two kinds of lactic acid are mirror images of each other. Feeding the human digestive system with levorotatory lactic acid molecules is like giving a left-handed pair of scissors to a right-handed person: they’re hard to handle. That is why it is a good idea to pick yogurt from the supermarket shelves that states on the container: “Contains mainly dextrorotatory [or right-turning] lactic acid.

In addition to feeding your gut bacteria, it turns out there is a form of citrus fiber called modified citrus pectin (MCP) that has almost magical anti-aging powers. It’s good at removing lead, cadmium, arsenic, and thallium. In one study, about 15 grams of modified citrus pectin powder per day for five days caused the study subjects to pass significantly higher levels of metals through their urine. Specifically, the amount of arsenic leaving the body increased by 130 percent, cadmium levels increased by 150 percent, and lead levels increased by 560 percent.30

The bacteria species in your colon today are more or less the same ones you had when you were six months old. About 80 percent of a person’s gut microflora transmit from his or her mother during birth. “It’s a very stable system,” says Khoruts. “You can trace a person’s family tree by their flora.

Depending on who’s living in your gut, you may or may not benefit from what you eat. Or be harmed. Charred red meat has long been called a carcinogen, but in fact it is only the raw material for making carcinogens. Without the gut bacteria that break it down, the raw goods are harmless. (This applies to drugs too; depending on the makeup of your gut flora, the efficacy of a drug may vary.) The science is new and extremely complex, but the bottom line is simple. Changing people’s bacteria is turning out to be a more effective strategy for treatment and prevention of disease than changing their diet.

If the nature-over-nurture idea that your personality is not your own hard-earned creation but a product of your genes makes you feel uneasy, how about the concept of a personality composed by the bacteria living in your gut? Mice without gut microbes are antisocial, preferring to spend time alone rather than with other mice. Whereas a mouse with a normal microbiota will choose to meet and greet any new mice added to its cage, germ-free mice stick with mice they already know. Simply having gut microbes seems to make them more friendly. Beyond friendship, it’s possible that your microbiota may even affect who you are attracted to.

but you’re actually thinking about how cows literally could not survive if it weren’t for the bacteria in their guts, and how that sort of means that cows do not exist as independent life-forms, but that’s not really something you can say out loud, so you’re ultimately forced to choose between lying and seeming weird.

Humans are actually reservoir hosts for countless bacteria and viruses that haven’t even been classified yet. About twenty percent of the genetic information in the nose doesn’t match any known or cataloged organism. In the gut, forty to fifty percent of all the DNA is from bacteria and viruses that have never been classified.

Overproduction of gas is not a pleasant thing—it bloats the gut, making us feel uncomfortable—but passing a bit of wind is not only necessary, it is healthy, too. We are living creatures with a miniature world living inside us, working away and producing many things. Just as we release exhaust fumes into the Earth’s atmosphere, so must our microbes, too. It may make a funny sound and it may smell a bit, but not necessarily. Bifidobacteria and Lactobacilli, for instance, do not produce any unpleasant odors. People who never need to break wind are starving their gut bacteria and are not good hosts for their microbe guests. Pure prebiotics can be bought at

Baby’s first colonizers are supposed to be predominantly lactobacilli, the microbes picked up in the vaginal canal. Lactobacillus sets up a healthy human gut with positive influence over digestion and immune functions. If other species of bacteria are baby’s first colonizers, the baby’s microbiome sets up differently, maybe harmfully.

The latest studies conducted on mice prove that this inflammatory response is also a major cause of aging. In 2018, researchers at the Yale School of Medicine correlated a microbe that was present in mice with a lupuslike autoimmune condition that crossed from the gut into the mice’s organs. The result was gut wall disintegration and immune cells (which you can think of in this case as mouse cops) in the same organs as the invading bacteria. Notably, the same bad bugs were found in liver biopsies of human patients with autoimmune diseases, but not in healthy control subjects.6 In other words, a leaky gut that allows bacteria to cross the border of the gut lining causes autoimmune disease in both mice and humans.

A growing body of scientific research links antibiotic use in animals to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria: in the animals’ own guts, in the manure that farmers use on crops or store on their land, and in human illnesses as well. Resistant bacteria move from animals to humans in groundwater and dust, on flies, and via the meat those animals get turned into.

Humans are actually reservoir hosts for countless bacteria and viruses that haven’t even been classified yet. About twenty percent of the genetic information in the nose doesn’t match any known or cataloged organism. In the gut, forty to fifty percent of all the DNA is from bacteria and viruses that have never been classified. Even in the blood, up to two percent is a sort of “biological dark matter.” In many ways, this biological dark matter, this sea of unknown viruses and bacteria, is the ultimate frontier. Almost all viruses are harmless until they jump to another host—a life form different from their natural hosts. The virus then combines with a completely new genome and causes a new and unexpected reaction—an illness. That was the ultimate danger with viruses,

The bacteria don't physically reshape the gut themselves. Instead, they work via their hosts. They are more management than labour. Lora Hooper demonstrated this by infusing into germ-free mice a common gut bacterium called Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron-or B-theta to its friends. She found that the microbe actovated a wide range of mouse genes that are involved in absorbing nutrients, building an impermeable barrier, breaking down toxins, creating blood vessels, and creating mature cells. In other words, the microbe told the mice how to use their own genes to make a healthy gut. Scott Gilbert, a developmental biologist, calls this idea co-devolopment. It's as far as you can get from the still-lingering idea that microbes are just threats. Instead, they actually help us become who we are.

What are you thinking about?" And they want you to be, like, "I'm thinking about you, darling," but you're actually thinking about how cows literally could not survive if it weren't for the bacteria in their guts, and how that sort of means that cows do not exist as independant life-forms, but that's not really something you can say out loud, so you're ultimately forced to choose between lying and seeming weird.

Bacteria, never forget, got along for billions of years without us. We couldn’t survive a day without them. They process our wastes and make them usable again; without their diligent munching nothing would rot. They purify our water and keep our soils productive. Bacteria synthesize vitamins in our gut, convert the things we eat into useful sugars and polysaccharides, and go to war on alien microbes that slip down our gullet.

Diets don’t work because they require us to live in a constant state of war with our bodies. “Whenever you restrict food intake, you’re going to run up against your own biology,” explains Dr. Sharma. “It doesn’t matter what program you follow. As soon as your body senses that there are fewer calories going in than going out, it harnesses a whole array of defense mechanisms to fight that.” When we’re dieting, our bodies try to conserve energy, so our metabolism slows down, the result being that you have to eat even less to keep losing weight. That becomes an increasingly difficult project because our bodies also produce more of the hormones, such as ghrelin, that trigger hunger. There is even some evidence that the bacteria in our guts respond when we eat fewer calories, shifting their populations in ways that will send more hunger signals to our brains.

The important thing is not to reduce the human body to a two-dimensional cause-and-effect machine. The brain, the rest of the body, bacteria, and the elements in our food all interact with each other in four dimensions. Striving to understand all these axes is surely the best way to improve our knowledge. However, we can more easily tinker with bacteria than with our brain or our genes-and that is what makes microbes so fascinating.

This is the science behind how UPF affects the human body: • The destruction of the food matrix by physical, chemical and thermal processing means that UPF is, in general, soft. This means you eat it fast, which means you eat far more calories per minute and don’t feel full until long after you’ve finished. It also potentially reduces facial bone size and bone density, leading to dental problems. • UPF typically has a very high calorie density because it’s dry, and high in fat and sugar and low in fibre, so you get more calories per mouthful. • It displaces diverse whole foods from the diet, especially among low-income groups. And UPF itself is often micronutrient-deficient, which may also contribute to excess consumption. • The mismatch between the taste signals from the mouth and the nutrition content in some UPF alters metabolism and appetite in ways that we are only beginning to understand, but that seem to drive excess consumption. • UPF is addictive, meaning that for some people binges are unavoidable. • The emulsifiers, preservatives, modified starches and other additives damage the microbiome, which could allow inflammatory bacteria to flourish and cause the gut to leak. • The convenience, price and marketing of UPF urge us to eat constantly and without thought, which leads to more snacking, less chewing, faster eating, increased consumption and tooth decay. • The additives and physical processing mean that UPF affects our satiety system directly. Other additives may affect brain and endocrine function, and plastics from the packaging might affect fertility. • The production methods used to make UPF require expensive subsidy and drive environmental destruction, carbon emissions and plastic pollution, which harm us all.

The part where they say, “What are you thinking about?” And they want you to be, like, “I’m thinking about you, darling,” but you’re actually thinking about how cows literally could not survive if it weren’t for the bacteria in their guts, and how that sort of means that cows do not exist as independent life-forms, but that’s not really something you can say out loud, so you’re ultimately forced to choose between lying and seeming weird.

Fresh in modern memory, for hamburger eaters anyway: Toxin gene transfer to E. coli bacteria in cattle,” Turner began. “Modern factory farming and slaughterhouse technique puts severe stress on the cattle, who send hormonal signals to their multiple tummies, their rumen. E. coli react to these signals by taking up phages—viruses for bacteria—that carry genes from another common gut bacteria, Shigella. Those genes just happen to code for Shiga toxin. The exchange does not hurt the cow, fascinating, no? But when a predator kills a cow-like critter in nature, and bites into the gut—which most do, eating half-digested grass and such, wild salad it’s called—it swallows a load of E. coli packed with Shiga toxin. That can make the predators—and us—very sick. Sick or dead predators reduce the stress on cows. It’s a clever relief valve. Now we sterilize our beef with radiation. All the beef.

The part where they say, “What are you thinking about?” And they want you to be, like, “I’m thinking about you, darling,” but you’re actually thinking about how cows literally could not survive if it weren’t for the bacteria in their guts, and how that sort of means that cows do not exist as independent life-forms, but that’s not really something you can say out loud, so you’re ultimately forced to choose between lying and seeming weird. “Well,

I definitely felt attracted to some people, and I liked the idea of being with someone, but the actual mechanics of it didn't much suit my talents. Like, parts of typical romantic relationships that made me anxious included 1. Kissing; 2. Having to say the right things to avoid hurt feelings; 3. Saying more wrong things while trying to apologize; 4. Being at a movie theater and feeling obligated to hold hands even after your hands become sweaty and the sweat starts mixing together; and 5. The part where they say, "What are you thinking about?" And they want you to be, like, "I'm thinking about you, darling," but you're actually thinking about how cows literally could not survive if it weren't for the bacteria in their guts, and how that sort of means that cows do not exist as independent life-forms, but that's not really something you can say out loud, so you're ultimately forced to choose between lying and seeming weird.

Certain foods, such as meats, appear to harbor bacteria that can trigger inflammation dead or alive, even when the food is fully cooked. Endotoxins are not destroyed by cooking temperatures, stomach acid, or digestive enzymes, so after a meal of animal products, these endotoxins may end up in your intestines. They are then thought to be ferried by saturated fat across the gut wall into your bloodstream, where they can trigger the inflammatory reaction in your arteries.44

bacterium added to the yogurt was Lactobacillus reuteri—in a form particularly resistant to digestion. Within six weeks, their levels of bad LDL cholesterol sank by 8.91 percent. That’s about half the improvement attained by taking a mild anti-cholesterol drug—but without the side effects. Studies using other types of bacteria lowered cholesterol levels by as much as 11 to 30 percent. Follow-up research still needs to be carried out to verify these promising indications.

For the 98 percent of people who don’t have wheat issues, there is no evidence to suggest that following a gluten-free diet has any benefits.39 In fact, there is some evidence suggesting that a gluten-free diet may adversely affect gut health in people without celiac disease, wheat sensitivity, or wheat allergy. A month on a gluten-free diet was found to adversely affect gut flora and immune function, potentially setting up those on gluten-free diets for an overgrowth of harmful bacteria in their intestines.

The closest analogy, the one her brain reached for and rejected and reached for again, was splashing into a lake. It was cold, but not cold. There was a smell, rich and loamy. The smell of growth and decay. She was aware of her body, the skin, the sinew, the curl of her gut. She was aware of the nerves that were firing in her brain as she became aware of the nerves firing in her brain. She unmade herself and watched herself being unmade. All the bacteria on her skin and in her blood, the virii in her tissues. The woman who had been Elvi Okoye became a landscape. A world. She fell farther in.

Then it gets even worse—your irritated intestinal lining allows undigested food particles and bacteria to enter your bloodstream and trigger a wider inflammatory response as your body attacks these foreign particles. When these antinutrients continually damage your gut, which unfortunately happens to most people on Western diets that include large amounts of inflammation-causing processed foods, your body is forced to constantly mount a response against a perceived enemy. It does this by releasing a stream of small inflammatory proteins called cytokines into your bloodstream, which eventually enter your brain.

Our modern diets and lifestyles are synergistically ravaging our mitochondria. Our mitochondria and the greater cells that house them co-evolved over eons in relationship with our environment. Their mechanisms work in connection with a combination of inputs and information that come from the outside world into our bodies and ultimately into them. Certain kinds of nutrients, sunlight, and information from bacteria in the gut, among other things, all help trigger or supply the cells and their powerhouses with what they require to work. But many of those inputs and information streams have changed radically, resulting in blocks to proper mitochondrial function and downright damage to

The disgusting smell of death of death is the result of certain airborne molecules with evocative names like cadaverine and putrescine. These molecules are not produced by death, however, but by life growing on death. After an animal dies, its cells self destruct and become food for the body's resident bacteria. They chew through the walls of the gut and spread through the body. They release cadaverine and putrescine merely as byproducts of their metabolism. These molecules are not actually dangerous to us. They won't kill us like a whiff of sarin or cyanide. Yet our ancestors evolved a keen sensitivity to these molecules, along with an instinctive response to recoil at the merest whiff.

the time of writing, there is only one other probiotic bacteria species that is as well researched as the two mentioned above: E. coli Nissle 1917. This strain of E. coli was first isolated from the faeces of a soldier returning from the Balkan War. All the soldier’s comrades had suffered severe diarrhoea in the Balkans, but he had not. Since then, many studies have been carried out to show that this bacterium can help with diarrhoea, gastrointestinal disease, and a weakened immune system. Although the soldier died many years ago, scientists continue to breed his talented E. coli in medical laboratories and package it up for sale in pharmacies so it can work its wonders in other people’s guts.

The virosphere permeates the earth’s atmosphere, which is filled with viruses blowing in the wind. Around ten million virus particles land on every square meter of the earth each day, drifting down from the air. Viruses saturate the soil and the sea. A liter of seawater contains more virus particles than any other form of life. Viruses exist in vast numbers in the human gut, infecting all of the four thousand different kinds of bacteria that live naturally in a person’s intestines. Viruses can sometimes infect other viruses. A giant virus named the Mamavirus, which was discovered infecting amoebae that live in a water-cooling tower in Paris, gets infected by a small virus called the Sputnik. A Mamavirus particle with Sputnik disease is one sick virus—deformed and unable to replicate very well.

Autoimmune Disease—the “Leak” in Your Gut Autoimmune diseases are a disaster and there are no good medicines available (steroids work, but the treatment is worse than the disease). They’ve been around for centuries, but there’s been a clear uptick in the last fifty years. Why? Two hypotheses have been proffered to explain it: the barrier hypothesis (our skin or lungs are letting in antigens) and the hygiene hypothesis (we don’t eat dirt and are too hygienic). But in fact, in the gut, they’re the same thing; because the gut is the dirtiest place in the world—one hundred trillion bacteria to have to fend off at all times—you don’t need an intestine, you need a fortress. We’ve known for a while that leaky gut is akin to chinks in the walls of that fortress. Antigens, like enemy soldiers, escape through those chinks into the bloodstream, where T cells and antibodies react against them. But in a case of mistaken identity, these immune cells then accidentally identify parts of your body as foreign invaders and generate an immune response to kill them off, a process termed molecular mimicry. Then there are two new twists. First, it appears that one autoimmune disease, called ankylosing spondylitis, produces antibodies to a gut bacterium called Klebsiella pneumoniae. Conversely, a different autoimmune disease called rheumatoid arthritis produces antibodies to a second gut bacterium called Proteus mirabilis. Now, this might not seem that earth-shattering, but recent work has shown that the refined carbohydrates in processed food feed those two bacteria in particular, and that carbohydrate restriction improves both of these diseases. Indeed, a low-sugar, high-fiber Mediterranean diet has been shown to be efficacious at prevention and treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Furthermore, introduction of fiber to the diet appears to improve asthma (frequently an autoimmune disease), likely by improving gut function and reducing inflammation.

I’m really not looking to date anyone.” I know people often say that when secretly looking for ‎a romantic partner, but I meant it. I definitely felt attracted to some people, and I liked the ‎idea of being with someone, but the actual mechanics of it didn’t much suit my talents. Like, ‎parts of typical romantic relationships that made me anxious included 1. Kissing; 2. Having to ‎say the right things to avoid hurt feelings; 3. Saying more wrong things while trying to ‎apologize; 4. Being at a movie theater together and feeling obligated to hold hands even after ‎your hands become sweaty and the sweat starts mixing together; and 5. The part where they ‎say, “What are you thinking about?” And they want you to be, like, “I’m thinking about you, ‎darling,” but you’re actually thinking about how cows literally could not survive if it weren’t for ‎the bacteria in their guts, and how that sort of means that cows do not exist as independent ‎life-forms, but that’s not really something you can say out loud, so you’re ultimately forced to ‎choose between lying and seeming weird

Ever since the end of World War II, when antibiotics arrived like jingle-clad, ultramodern cleaning products, we’ve been swept up in antigerm warfare. But in a recent article published in Archives of General Psychiatry, the Emory University neuroscientist Charles Raison and his colleagues say there’s mounting evidence that our ultraclean, polished-chrome, Lysoled modern world holds the key to today’s higher rates of depression, especially among young people. Loss of our ancient bond with microorganisms in gut, skin, food, and soil plays an important role, because without them we’re not privy to the good bacteria our immune system once counted on to fend off inflammation. “Since ancient times,” Raison says, “benign microorganisms, sometimes referred to as ‘old friends,’ have taught the immune system how to tolerate other harmless microorganisms, and in the process reduce inflammatory responses that have been linked to most modern illnesses, from cancer to depression.” He raises the question of “whether we should encourage measured reexposure to benign environmental microorganisms

Red Meat, Gut Bacteria, and Heart Disease The high-protein intake from animal products doesn’t just accelerate aging and produce cancer. Excessive meat intake has also been associated with an elevated risk of cardiovascular death.29 For example, combined data

Interestingly, there is even less diversity of gut bacteria in obese people than in lean people: more food does not equal more nutrition, and the worse your diet, the more your gut microflora suffers.

We now know that when bacteria break down fibre, they produce chemicals called short chain fatty acids (SCFAs); these trigger an influx of anti-inflammatory cells that bring a boiling immune system back down to a calm simmer. Without fibre, we dial our immunostats to higher settings, predisposing us to inflammatory disease. To make matters worse, when fibre is absent, our starving bacteria react by devouring whatever else they can find-including the mucus layer that covers the gut. As the layer disappears, bacteria get closer to the gut lining itself, where they can trigger responses from the immune cells underneath. And without the restraining influence of the SCFAs, those responses can easily build to extreme proportions.

Products such as sucralose, saccharin, aspartame, and other nonnutritive artificial sweeteners alter the gut holobiome, killing good bacteria and allowing

Organic, unfiltered apple cider vinegar is a powerhouse of nutrients and prebiotic compounds that help the beneficial gut bacteria to regain the upper hand. Your energy levels and health will improve, and you’ll feel a lot more vital again.

In Super Genes, Chopra and Tanzi acquaint us with new research that shows that “Some microbiomes may work better at nutrient extraction than others, with obese people extracting too much and skinny people extracting too little.” They also tell us that the microbiome reaches beyond digestion into every part of the body, and “It’s now known that gut bacteria produce neuroactive compounds that interact with brain cells and which can even control the expression of our own genes through epigenetics. When the natural balance of the microbiome becomes disrupted and unbalanced, we call it dysbiosis, yet only now is it being discovered that far from being just a digestive problem, dysbiosis is systemic in the damage it causes. The range of disorders linked to it is growing but is already startling in its numbers: links have been found to asthma, eczema, Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, obesity, cardiovascular disease, atherosclerosis, cancer, and malnutrition. Avenues for new treatments are leading down the same road—to the microbiome.

Conditions such as long-term infection, exposure to toxins, food allergies, vitamin D deficiency, abnormal overgrowth of bacteria within the gut, or even constant emotional stress can create undue pressure on the immune system. As you will read in greater depth in chapter 4, this distress leads to chronic low-level inflammation, a major component of many chronic diseases, including osteoporosis.

All scientists, regardless of discipline, need to be prepared to confront the broadest consequences of our work—but we need to communicate its more detailed aspects as well. I was reminded of this at a recent lunch I attended with some of Silicon Valley’s greatest technology gurus. One of them said, “Give me ten to twenty million dollars and a team of smart people, and we can solve virtually any engineering challenge.” This person obviously knew a thing or two about solving technological problems—a long string of successes attested to that—but ironically, such an approach would not have produced the CRISPR-based gene-editing technology, which was inspired by curiosity-driven research into natural phenomena. The technology we ended up creating did not take anywhere near ten to twenty million dollars to develop, but it did require a thorough understanding of the chemistry and biology of bacterial adaptive immunity, a topic that may seem wholly unrelated to gene editing. This is but one example of the importance of fundamental research—the pursuit of science for the sake of understanding our natural world—and its relevance to developing new technologies. Nature, after all, has had a lot more time than humans to conduct experiments! If there’s one overarching point I hope you will take away from this book, it’s that humans need to keep exploring the world around us through open-ended scientific research. The wonders of penicillin would never have been discovered had Alexander Fleming not been conducting simple experiments with Staphylococci bacteria. Recombinant DNA research—the foundation for modern molecular biology—became possible only with the isolation of DNA-cutting and DNA-copying enzymes from gut- and heat-loving bacteria. Rapid DNA sequencing required experiments on the remarkable properties of bacteria from hot springs. And my colleagues and I would never have created a powerful gene-editing tool if we hadn’t tackled the much more fundamental question of how bacteria fight off viral infections.

I am not saying that we shouldn’t use antibiotics when needed. Antibiotics saved my life when I was drowning with double pneumonia on my friend Richard’s sofa. But we currently use antibiotics excessively and irresponsibly. We are wiping the population of good bacteria from the face of the earth, and we may not be able to live healthy lives without them. The medical profession—myself included—needs to be more prudent and vigilant about prescribing antibiotics so promptly.

The severity of gut dysfunction varies for four reasons: The toxic organisms present may be beyond what the Clean Gut program is designed to remove. These include severe yeast overgrowth, parasites, viruses, and certain bad bacteria, such as salmonella, Escherichia coli (E. coli), or Clostridium difficile (C. difficile). Other influences may cause a severe leaky gut, such as heavy-metal toxicity or full-blown autoimmune-induced inflammation, including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, which impair the regeneration of the cells of the intestinal wall. Mechanical obstructions may interfere, such as constrictions, scarring, or an impacted, dilated colon. Diverticulitis may be present, with pockets of infection. Of these four reasons, only the final two require immediate medical attention and surgery.

The difference is staggering, by a factor of 10. In the human gut alone, there are usually around 100 trillion bacteria, while in one entire human being there are only about 10 trillion cells, counting all types.

While giving birth is one of the most natural functions of all animals, the way humans do it has deviated substantially from the way Mother Nature intended—particularly in the United States, where pregnancy and birth are treated like a disease. It’s dealt with in sterile hospital rooms. Mothers are hooked up with intravenous lines and set up in the strangest positions, which are designed more for the doctor’s view and access than the mother’s comfort and birthing process. Too many women are induced, which often leads to C-sections that would not have been necessary if the natural process of labor had been respected and allowed to proceed without disruption. A baby in the womb is sterile, but when passing through the birth canal, it is exposed to bacteria, mouth first. These bacteria are supposed to colonize the gut, nature’s first vaccination of sorts. This does not happen during a C-Section.

Yet despite the excessive hype, the concept behind probiotics is still sound.19 Given all the important roles that bacteria play in our bodies, it should be possible to improve our health by swallowing or applying the right microbes. It’s just that the strains in current use may not be the right ones. They make up just a tiny fraction of the microbes that live with us, and their abilities represent a thin slice of what the microbiome is fully capable of. We met more suitable microbes in earlier chapters. There’s the mucus-loving bacterium, Akkermansia muciniphila, whose presence correlates with a lower risk of obesity and malnutrition. There’s Bacteroides fragilis, which stokes the anti-inflammatory side of the immune system. There’s Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, another anti-inflammatory bug, which is conspicuously rare in the guts of people with IBD, and whose arrival can reverse the symptoms of that disease in mice. These microbes could be part of the probiotics of the future. Their abilities are relevant and impressive. They are well adapted to our bodies. Some are already abundant – in healthy adults, one in every twenty gut bacteria is F. prausnitzii. These are not D-listers of the human microbiome like Lactobacillus; they are the stars of the gut. They won’t be shy about colonising it.20

We already know that low thyroid = low HCL = increased gut pH = less protection from bacteria, viruses, and fungus.

We humans are made such that loving attention can overcome both genetics and environment to a truly remarkable extent.

Physical or emotional stress Microbiome experiences stress Via the enteric nervous system (the nervous system in your gut) and/or the vagus nerve, the gut alerts your brain, specifically, your hypothalamus, a gland that regulates your body’s hormonal system. Your hypothalamus initiates the stress response (also known as the “fight or flight” response) by alerting your pituitary gland. Your pituitary passes the message on to your adrenal glands (located above your kidneys). Your adrenals release a complex cascade of stress hormones, including cortisol.

Stress imbalances microbiome, disrupts gut, promotes brain dysfunction Imbalanced microbiome disrupts gut, promotes brain dysfunction, induces exaggerated response to stress Dysfunctional gut imbalances microbiome, promotes brain dysfunction, induces exaggerated response to stress

NTIS is far more common than we ever suspected, and it affects many patients even with what might be considered “low-grade” or “nonclinical” chronic depression and anxiety.

Prebiotic supplements are a form of fiber supplement—specifically, a soluble fiber—that has been shown to support the growth of beneficial bacteria.

When researchers explain the methodology of how they performed their research, there is often a portion that describes the preparation of the lab animals. This section explains that standardized such-and-such breed animals (such as Wistar rats) were “put on a Western diet until their cholesterol and inflammation were sufficiently elevated to carry out the research protocol.” What this means is that the Western diet is used to produce specific disease conditions in the lab animals, so that the researchers can carry out their research on different drug effects. Isn't it a bit ironic that poor diet is used to produce disease for drug testing, and yet doctors do not really push good diet as a way of preventing or treating illness?

Babies who are born via Cesarean section have a higher risk of developing ADHD, but why? Understanding the links in the chain give credence to the importance of healthy gut bacteria to sustain intestinal health and overall wellness. When a baby passes through the birth canal naturally, billions of healthy bacteria wash over the child, thereby inoculating the newborn with appropriate probiotics whose pro-health effects remain for life. If a child is born via C-section, however, he or she misses out on this shower of sorts, and this sets the stage for bowel inflammation and, therefore, an increased risk of sensitivity to gluten and ADHD later in life.12

seems to be a rule of nutritionism that for every good nutrient, there must be a bad nutrient to serve as its foil, the latter a focus for our food fears and the former for our enthusiasms. A backlash against protein arose in America at the turn of the last century as diet gurus like John Harvey Kellogg and Horace Fletcher (about whom more later) railed against the deleterious effects of protein on digestion (it supposedly led to the proliferation of toxic bacteria in the gut) and promoted the cleaner, more wholesome carbohydrate in its place. The legacy of that revaluation is the breakfast cereal, the strategic objective of which was to dethrone animal protein at the morning meal. Ever since, the history of modern

The bacteria don’t physically reshape the gut themselves. Instead, they work via their hosts. They are more management than labour. Lora Hooper demonstrated this by infusing into germ-free mice a common gut bacterium called Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron – or B-theta to its friends.7 She found that the microbe activated a wide range of mouse genes that are involved in absorbing nutrients, building an impermeable barrier, breaking down toxins, creating blood vessels, and creating mature cells. In other words, the microbe told the mice how to use their own genes to make a healthy gut.8 Scott Gilbert, a developmental biologist, calls this idea co-development. It’s as far as you can get from the still-lingering idea that microbes are just threats. Instead, they actually help us become who we are.9

People thought that what you ate was super important and then they realized that there’s micro world of amazing bacteria in people’s guts and that they’re mildly different. What might be a great diet for you isn’t for someone else, not only because they’re biologically different, but because of this other species of microbes that has nothing to do with their DNA, they have their own DNA.