From NewScientist.com
Diet switch sparks gut bug revolution in just 24 hours
11 December 2013 by Linda Geddes
IT TAKES just 24 hours to change the balance of power in your gut.
Switching to a diet based exclusively on animals or plants triggers rapid changes to the microbes that rule your gut. This knowledge could help fine-tune diets to improve health, as well as reduce the risk of illnesses like inflammatory bowel disease.
The human body contains a community of other organisms known as a microbiome. These microbial cells outnumber our own by 10 to 1, with most of them colonising the gut. Changing diet can rapidly alter these microbes in mice.
To investigate whether the same was true for humans, Peter Turnbaugh at Harvard University and his colleagues asked 10 volunteers, including one vegetarian, to switch from their normal diet to either a diet based on meat, eggs and cheese, or one rich in grains, fruit and vegetables for five days. Each day the team sequenced the microbial RNA in the volunteers' faeces to identify which gut microbes were present.
"Particularly in the case of the animal-based diet, we saw quite dramatic changes in the abundance of different microbes – even over the course of a single day," says Turnbaugh. For example, numbers of the bacterium Bilophila wadsworthia increased when people ate the animal-based diet. This organism feeds on bile acids, which aid the digestion of saturated fats in milk. An increase in B. wadsworthia has been linked to inflammatory bowel disease in mice.
Switching to a plant-based diet prompted a hike in the numbers of bacteria that produce a fatty acid called butyrate, which seems to reduce inflammation.
Read more from NewScientist.com >>
Diet switch sparks gut bug revolution in just 24 hours
11 December 2013 by Linda Geddes
IT TAKES just 24 hours to change the balance of power in your gut.
Switching to a diet based exclusively on animals or plants triggers rapid changes to the microbes that rule your gut. This knowledge could help fine-tune diets to improve health, as well as reduce the risk of illnesses like inflammatory bowel disease.
The human body contains a community of other organisms known as a microbiome. These microbial cells outnumber our own by 10 to 1, with most of them colonising the gut. Changing diet can rapidly alter these microbes in mice.
To investigate whether the same was true for humans, Peter Turnbaugh at Harvard University and his colleagues asked 10 volunteers, including one vegetarian, to switch from their normal diet to either a diet based on meat, eggs and cheese, or one rich in grains, fruit and vegetables for five days. Each day the team sequenced the microbial RNA in the volunteers' faeces to identify which gut microbes were present.
"Particularly in the case of the animal-based diet, we saw quite dramatic changes in the abundance of different microbes – even over the course of a single day," says Turnbaugh. For example, numbers of the bacterium Bilophila wadsworthia increased when people ate the animal-based diet. This organism feeds on bile acids, which aid the digestion of saturated fats in milk. An increase in B. wadsworthia has been linked to inflammatory bowel disease in mice.
Switching to a plant-based diet prompted a hike in the numbers of bacteria that produce a fatty acid called butyrate, which seems to reduce inflammation.
Read more from NewScientist.com >>
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