By Dr. Mercola

A new study in the journal Nutrition in Clinical Practice shows that microorganisms in the human gastrointestinal tract form an intricate, living fabric of natural controls affecting body weight, energy, and nutrition1. The findings may offer new ideas on how to treat nutrition-related maladies, including obesity and a range of serious health consequences linked to under-nutrition, the scientists said.

An article in Science Daily reported on the featured findings, stating2:

The health implications of this variation in gut bacteria acquired from birth is exactly what Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride's research sheds light upon. Her research shows there's a profound dynamic interaction between your gut, your brain, and your immune system, starting from birth. She has developed what might be one of the most profoundly important treatment strategies for a wide range of neurological, psychological, and autoimmune disorders—all of which are heavily influenced by your gut health.

I believe her Gut and Psychology Syndrome, and Gut and Physiology Syndrome (GAPS) Nutritional program is vitally important for MOST people, as the majority of people have such poor gut health due to poor diet and toxic exposures, but it's particularly crucial for pregnant women and young children.

Children who are born with severely damaged gut flora are not only more susceptible to disease; they're also more susceptible to vaccine damage, which may help explain why some children develop symptoms of autism after receiving one or more childhood vaccinations.

According to Dr. Campbell-McBride, most autistic children are born with perfectly normal brains and sensory organs. The trouble arises when they fail to develop normal gut flora. In a previous interview, she explained the chain of events that is typical for many, if not most, autistic children:

It's important to understand that the gut flora your child acquires during vaginal birth is dependent on the mother's gut flora. So if mother's microflora is abnormal, the child's will be as well. Autism isn't the only potential outcome in this case. GAPS may manifest as a conglomerate of symptoms that can fit the diagnosis of either autism, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), attention deficit disorder (ADD), dyslexia, dyspraxia, or obsessive-compulsive disorder, just to name a few possibilities. Digestive issues, asthma, allergies, skin problems and autoimmune disorders are also common outgrowths of GAPS, as it can present itself either psychologically or physiologically.

Maintaining optimal gut flora, and 'reseeding' your gut with fermented foods and probiotics when you're taking an antibiotic, may be one of the most important steps you can take to improve your health. If you aren't eating fermented foods, you most likely need to supplement with a probiotic on a regular basis, especially if you're eating a lot of processed foods. As explained by Dr. Campbell-McBride, poor diet in general, and each course of antibiotics extols a heavy price:

In essence, what we have is a generational build-up of abnormal gut flora, with each generation becoming ever more prone to being further harmed from the use of antibiotics—and vaccines as well. To learn more about GAPS, please see this previous interview with Dr. Campbell-McBride.

As time goes on, we're gaining more and more information about the important roles gut flora plays in maintaining overall health. The good news is that this is an area you can exercise a lot of control over. Your diet can quickly alter the composition of your gut flora. Processed foods high in sugar and chemical additives and low in nutrients is a surefire way to decimate the beneficial bacteria in your gut, allowing the harmful pathogenic kind to thrive.

Research has also shown that your microflora has a significant impact on gene expression, such as the genes responsible for vitamin biosynthesis and metabolism. Probioticshave been found to influence the activity of hundreds of your genes, helping them to express in a positive, disease-fighting manner—some of which affect your body in a manner resembling the effects of certain medicines!

A recent study published in the journal Nature3 found that "gut microbial communities represent one source of human genetic and metabolic diversity." According to the authors:

You might not be aware of this, but scientists are now busy mapping the microbes in your body in much the same way as they mapped the human genome. The Human Microbiome Project4 was launched in October 2008, with the goal to catalogue all the bacterial inhabitants in the human body. Researchers have identified most of the microbes in the human gut, but they still don't know much about the actions of each individual microbe, or how they work together.

An article published in Wired Magazine last year discussed this fascinating work5. It also features an illustrative graphic of the primary microbes found in humans across the globe. 6

According to another study, also published in the journal Nature7 last year, each of us harbors one of three primary "communities" of bacteria. The health ramifications of each are still being teased out.

The ideal balance of beneficial to pathogenic bacteria in your gut is about 85 percent good bacteria and 15 percent bad. Maintaining this ideal ratio is what it's all about when we're talking about optimizing your gut health. Historically, people didn't have the same problems with their gut health as we do today for the simple fact that they got large quantities of beneficial bacteria, i.e. probiotics, from their diet in the form of fermented or cultured foods, which were invented long before the advent of refrigeration and other forms of food preservation.

You can ferment virtually any food, and every traditional culture has traditionally fermented their foods to prevent spoilage. There are also many fermented beverages and yoghurts. Quite a large percent of all the foods that people consumed on a daily basis were fermented, and each mouthful provides trillions of beneficial bacteria—far more than you can get from a probiotics supplement.

Here's a case in point: It's unusual to find a probiotic supplement containing more than 10 billion colony-forming units. But when my team actually tested fermented vegetables produced by probiotic starter cultures, they had 10 trillion colony-forming units of bacteria. Literally, one serving of vegetables was equal to an entire bottle of a high potency probiotic! Fermented foods also give you a wider variety of beneficial bacteria, so all in all, it's your most cost effective alternative.

Fermenting your own foods is a fairly straight-forward and simple process, and can provide even greater savings. To learn more, please listen to my interview with Caroline Barringer, a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (NTP) who has been involved with nutrition for about 20 years. She's now one of Dr. Campbell-McBride's chief training partners, helping people understand the food preparation process.

Download Interview Transcript

Sources and References

1 Nutrition in Clinical Practice 2012 Apr;27(2):201-14

2 Science Daily June 6, 2012

3 Nature 2012 doi:10.1038/nature11053

4, 6 NIH Human Microbiome Project

5 Wired Magazine April 20, 2011

7 Nature May 12, 2011: 473; 174-180