Gut Bacteria

More and more research flooding the science wires lately... here's a nice article at MDA summarizing some interesting findings...

Headlines:

• They learn from each other.
• They improve our bone mineral density.
• They nullify anti-nutrients.
• They manufacture vitamins.
• They form a large physical barrier against pathogens.
• They represent a “second brain.”
• They can make us depressed, anxious, obsessive-compulsive, and even autistic.

Read more: 7 things you had no idea gut bacteria could do

But can they cook dinner, clean the house and take the dogs for a walk? And maybe discipline unruly teenagers? Seriously, this is really some promising stuff in terms of health and I hope that more will be done in terms of research into this. 

soon....

The human microbiome does so much for us that we don't even realize it does.  Here's a great article I had my students read earlier in the year when we studied ecology--I had them read it and discuss it in class since we were talking about ecological communities, and the microbiome is definitely a prime example of one.

http://www.actionbioscience.org/genomics/the_human_microbiom e.html

It does seem like the most promising work on obesity seems to be happening in this area.  However, just a little reminder not to get ahead of ourselves came with this study..

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/hadza-hunter-gatherer-gut-microbiome/

It basically stands the "good" and "bad" gut bacteria on it's ear.  Ain't science grand :)

I'm looking forward to more info on this topic from Dr Sharma on his blog.  He recently announced that his program has recruited Jens Walter to join their team, Walter's area of focus is the role of gut bacteria in obesity.  I highly recommend his blog as worth following if you're interested in obesity research.

OH might not be the right place for this, but how about the fact that dark chocolate helps increase the 'good' gut bacteria?

http://theadvocate.com/home/8990005-125/lsu-researchers-discover-dark-chocolate

Yep - even a product now available that includes probiotics mixed with dark choc...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0048KB3KE/ref=wms_ohs_prod uct?ie=UTF8&psc=1