Your small intestine (gut) is home to trillions of bacteria from hundreds of different species. They compete, cooperate, grow, shrink, and engage in an intricate dance that keeps a healthy balance. Your gut bacteria influence your whole body. There’s a direct pathway between your gut and your brain, for example [1]. Gut bacteria can even influence body-wide fat storage [2]. Your gut biome’s widespread influence gives you a powerful opportunity to strengthen your whole body. The flip side of that, though, is that when your gut bacteria fall out of balance, you can see a broad range of effects. If...

Right now, as you read this, an entire ecosystem of bacteria is living in your gut. In fact, you might be more bacterium than human: we have about an equal number of bacteria and human cells, possibly skewed slightly in favor of the little visitors [1]. That sounds strange at first - maybe even alarming - but it’s actually a good thing. Researchers are fascinated by gut bacteria; since 2010 there have been more than 8500 studies on the genus Lactobacillus alone [2]. With all that research, it’s becoming clear that your unique collection of gut bacteria has a huge...

When I was in graduate school, I was working 3 teaching positions, running a clinical study, fulfilling my research data collection and analysis, studying for a “Qualifying Exam,” which would basically determine whether I became a PhD candidate or not, AND on top of that, training intensively for a ½ marathon. The post How does the Gut Microbiome really affect our health? appeared first on Ample.