The ultimate guide to probiotic supplements

I've been talking a lot about how wrong it is to ignore our gut flora, and I've tried to make a list of things we can do to optimize our gut flora. Something I have omitted is the talk about probiotics.
Although I am taking my own supplement, it's quite frankly a very unregulated area - something I intensely loathe! As you may have noticed, I like my facts to be evidence-based!
This post, however, is about a list of probiotics that have been studied for the treatment of various gastrointestinal (GI) issues and their level of evidence.
Although it is an American list, I think it gives an insight on which strains are useful for which ailment.
Have a look over HERE! If you are from the US, you may recognize some names. And some indeed are international so even we get them here in the UK.

Do you take probiotics? Is there a special disease, condition you would like to deal with by taking probiotics?

Let me know in the comments section,
See you next Monday,

Chole, the MBAI Snail

A special post today: My friend C made me a knitted snail as emblem for the My Bugs And I (MBAI) blog! How nice is that??
Here is Chole, the Snail!

Chole, the Snail

Scientists researching microbiota of animals and insects have understood a lot about their species inhabiting them, how they protect themselves, digest, and fight invaders. One organism that hasn't received a lot of attention is molluscs.
Considering that a lot of research has been carried out in humans but so little is known or accepted, I think it is quite fitting that Chole should be the emblem of the blog as he represents the unknown.
Long live Chole ;)

See you next Monday!

My guide to a healthy microbiota

Our microbiota is our own personal microsystem helping us to digest our food and fight invaders. It is composed of trillions of micro-organisms that populate our body, mostly in our gut. Among them, good and bad species fight for their territories. And the things we eat will feed the species that take over territories in our gut; studies have shown that eating processed food and a lot of sweet stuff is really good at killing off the most beneficial species that help us stay fit and healthy. On the other hand, eating food that will make our most beneficial species grow strong will help us achieve our goals of healthy living. More and more, doctors, nutritionists, naturopaths, (even oncologists), recognize the influence of good bacteria on our health.
What we are struggling with, however, is to know what to do about it. So, what can we do about it?

Here is my ultimate guide for a healthy microbiota. I gathered information and organized it into four sections:

Diet

Fibres - Yes

Why should I pay attention to my fibres intake?

1. Fibres have been advised as part of a healthy diet for years because they help with intestinal transit and make you regular.
2. It is also now known that certain fibres can be prebiotics, i.e. dedicated microbiota food that encourages good bacteria to prosper to help us fight invaders (more on how they do it HERE and why it's essential HERE).
3. Good bacteria help us to keep our colon intact and avoid inflammation (the infamous leaky gut syndrome) (more on this coming soon).

Where can I find fibres?

Apples, bananas, berries, raisins, kiwi, agave, honey, greens, onions, garlic, asparagus, chicory, Jerusalem artichokes, leeks, lentils, chickpeas, beans, brown rice, corn, buckwheat, flaxseed, whole wheat, whole rye, barley, almonds
Please note, foods such as cheese and cereal bars that are labelled ‘prebiotic’ usually have added inulin, a soluble fibre most often extracted from chicory root.

Fermented food - Yes

Fermented food is also an excellent source of goodies for your microbiota.
Sauerkraut; yogurt; soy; natto, miso or tempeh (fermented soy beans with specific species of bacteria); kefir (fermented milk); and kombucha (fermented green/black tea).

What to avoid?

Dietary emulsifiers
A paper published in the highly regarded Nature journal showed that dietary emulsifiers may promote intestinal issues in pre-disposed individuals and metabolic syndrome in anyone (obesity and diabetes). Indeed, carboxymethylcellulose and polysorbate-80 were shown to induce low-grade inflammation with consequences on the gut's mucosal integrity.

Glycoalkaloids?
Some of you who may be familiar with the leaky gut syndrome may have heard that saponins, aka glycoalkaloids, affect the integrity of our colon and should be avoided at all cost.
Saponins are present in spinach, oats, chick peas, beans, asparagus, onions, yams, garlic, tomatoes, and peppers as well as potatoes and tubers, but aren’t present in sweet potatoes. 
Whether these really have an impact on our health, I don't know yet, this will require a more extensive research, which I will carry out very soon.
But what I could find was that cooked potatoes release dietary resistant dextrin that act as prebiotic to modulate positively our microbiota. Moreover, a study in 2015 explained that if potatoes were previously thought to have a negative impact on our health, more research has revealed anti-cancer properties.

Sugar, processed meat, non-organic food are other types of food that are not recommended for a healthy microbiota. However, they do deserve a whole blog post each so, please come back soon to read about their impact on our gut mucosal integrity.

Behavioural habits

Alcool and smoking are clearly bad for you. Both have links to a higher risk of developing diseases including a long list of various cancers. In terms of influence on our microbiota, excessive alcohol intake has been shown to affect our microbial composition (HERE). Giving up smoking has also been shown to have remarkable effect and stimulate a healthier and more diverse microbiota (HERE).

Exercise is also a very good way of promoting a diverse microbiota as signals are sent via the gut-brain axis (HERE). Although admittedly when you exercise you are also more likely to follow a healthy regime, a study in mice showed that exercise alone induces gut microbial changes that are different from changes induced by diet (HERE).


Antibiotics is a subject I've already approached HERE. In brief, antibiotics can save human lives but definitely kill gut microbial lives so overuse is not recommended.

Sanitation is a thing of our generation whereby we absolutely want to get rid of all species on our bodies. But do we really? Too much soap, alcohol, and skin lotions are affecting our skin microbiota, which has been shown to enable bad bacteria to prosper (HERE).

Emotional being

Ever had a gut feeling about something? Ever wondered why we say GUT feeling? Scientists now believe that our microbiota has a major impact on our emotional well-being through the brain-gut axis (HERE). The brain-gut axis is the two-way information highway between our brain and our gut.
Moreover a recently aired TV documentary explained that in all situations, wearing a smile when you feel sad can make you feel better and change your brain signals.
My tips are then to smile, laugh when you can, reduce your daily stress, and accumulate all the beauty sleep you can get.

Maternal influence

Not much we can do about this but certainly you hope your mum had the opportunity to breastfeed you when you were a baby as breast milk is especially conceived to include both pre- and probiotics. And although you don't really have a choice on whether you were born naturally or by C-section, being born naturally and colonized by mum's best microbial starter pack puts you at an advantage in terms of lowered risk of developing diseases compared with C-section babies.
I've already written about this, you can find these articles HERE, HERE, and HERE.

I hope you enjoyed my ultimate guide,

What do you think would be easier to start with? Exercise, diet?

Let me know in the comment section, I'd love to read your stories.

See you next Monday!

What is the Human Microbiome?

This is the most comprehensive video I've watched so far that explains what microbiota and microbiome are and how, us humans, benefit from them. 

Please watch, it's amazing, and fun

I wish you all a very good week, see you next Monday for MBAI next article!

Introducing a major player in microbiota research

Introducing Rob Knight...
Rob Knight is a Scientist from the US and a co-founder of the American Gut Project.
His short biog says he 'explores the unseen microbial world that exists literally right under our noses — and everywhere else on (and in) our bodies.'

Here is his TED talk about how our microbes make us who we are... It is a very interesting video, my favourite bit is the following:

'But imagine if there were a kind of neglected organ in our bodies that weighed just as much as the brain and in some ways was just as important to who we are, but we knew so little about and treated with such disregard. And imagine if, through new scientific advances, we were just beginning to understand its importance to how we think of ourselves. Wouldn't you want to know more about it?'

What are you most afraid our microbiota will tell us? Would you like to have yours analysed?

I'd love to read your thoughts, feel free to leave me a comment.

Donate your poo to help people live a healthier life

A new technique called fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) used to help people with recurrent intestinal infections who do not respond to standard treatment relies on one very important thing: people's poo donations.

C.difficile infections are devastating for people who suffer from it as their quality of life is tremendously impaired due to frequent and painful diarrhoea episodes.
This infectious infection is due to the overgrowth of a gut bacterium called clostridium difficile and usually occurs after taking broad-spectrum antibiotics or any antibiotic for a long period of time. People may have underlying conditions that make them more susceptible of overgrowing or contracting that infection, which is detected by poo analysis.

Ironically, standard treatment for c.diff is a course of another antibiotic. Although people usually respond well, one in five persons will have recurring symptoms. For them, a vicious cycle of diarrhoea and antibiotics starts with sometimes no hope in sight.

That was until friends and relatives of a sufferer decided to create OpenBiome in 2012 (US based) after seeing him recovering completely following a fecal transplantation.

The principle of this technique is fairly simple: healthy donors have healthy balanced microbiota in their gut and poo and by 'inserting' that poo in a sick person's gut, the healthy bugs in the poo take over and rebalance the sick person's gut flora.

It may sound gross but this is a life-saving technique for people with this infection. It could also become more mainstream as this technique has also been suggested for a whole range of diseases including obesity (a trial has recently started to assess efficacy of poo pills on our weight - article coming soon).

But don't think it's easy to donate and get money from your poo. To be accepted as a poo donor, you have to be pretty clean-living in order to have the perfect balance of bugs' species in your poo.

For more information, visit OpenBiome.

Would you donate your poo if you knew it could help so many people? Would you agree to swallow a poo pill if it cured you of painful and recurrent diarrhoea?

Feel free to share your stories in the comments section, I'd love to read them.

See you next Monday!

Irreversible impact of a low fibre diet on gut flora

Any diet and health book, blog, advice will tell us to increase our intake of fibres. Fibres are essential for a variety of reasons including helping digestion, regulating our metabolism (avoid obesity and diabetes), avoid cardiovascular issues (lowering cholesterol), etc.

But did you know there are two types of fibres? Solubles and insolubles?
Both types behave differently in the gut, but they all end up being munched by our lovely gut flora species.

Those insoluble fibres are essential food for our little bugs. Without them, they are not doing too well. As the diversity in species is key to a healthy you, starving some species off simply results in an unhappy and unhealthy gut. The consequences of which can range from allergies to cancer.

Unfortunately, a recent study on mice showed that by being on a low-fibre highly-processed Western diet, entire species of friendly gut bacteria are starved off and never fully recover - even once back on a healthy high fibre diet.*

What was more worrying though was that this newly balanced gut flora with unhealthy species of bugs was passed on to new generations of mice (mainly from mum to baby as he gets born), and this with even less chance of recovery through healthy eating: some species were in fact completely extinct by generation number four!

This finding, combined with knowing that our Western lifestyle habits such as C-sections, formula feeding, and the overuse of antibiotics results in a poor gut flora diversity, should help us make a definite move towards a healthy life if we don't wish to affect future generations.

Where can I find good fibres, I hear you say: wholemeal bread, nuts, seeds, skin of fruit (apple, grapes, tomato), prunes, dates, popcorn, brown rice, bell peppers, cabbage, onions, lettuce, beans, peas, potato skin, cucumber skin, courgette, cauliflower, celery, avocado, unripe banana.

How do you take your fibres? Do you eat your recommended 30g/day?

Feel free to share your stories in the comments section, I'd love to read them.

See you next Monday1

The study can be found here