What’s so important about your Microbiome?

The microbiome is an incredible system of organisms living amongst us all over our bodies and inside! These organisms play an essential role with how our body functions and our overall health. In many cases we predict that when the microbiome is compromised disease arises. in the article The Dynamic Interplay between the Gut Microbiota and Autoimmune Diseases describes how autoimmune diseases could be linked with the dysbiosis of the microbiota in the gut. The microbiota also maintains nutritional activities, metabolic functions in nutrient digestion, detoxification, vitamin synthesis, and immunologic homeostasis in the host. Specifically, the gut microbiota disease could influence an immune response causing an inflammation disease. In the article they give a specific example that describes how “high levels of Prevotella copri correlate with low levels of the gut microbiota previously associated with immune-regulating properties.” All of which continues to show the importance between the commensal relationship of the microbiome and our immune system. In another article Revisit gut microbiota and its impact on human health and disease it describes how disruption of the microbiome can play a role in causing obesity, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, IBS, and even mental health illnesses like depression.

I think that it is important to understand how these organisms can impact your health so that you can strive to obtain a healthier lifestyle. I believe that people who find themselves in a continual cycle of health problems more than likely have a poor microbiome health. Maybe they have taken too many antibiotics and it has removed a lot of the good bacteria from the gut. Maybe when they were an infant they didn’t receive the nutrients necessary to build a healthy adult microbiome and have been predisposed to illness all their life. What was also described in the Revisit gut microbiota is how with more research on the microbiome we could tailor therapy to an individuals personal microbiome to ensure better outcomes.