“Think of your body as a big city apartment building.” This quote is from the beginning of a paragraph in “The Teeming Metropolis of You”, a short article found in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2012. This particular article discusses the various types of bacteria that live within our body, and how they play an important role in many essential bodily functions.
As a student of the scientific and medical fields, I found this piece to be very interesting. The section pertaining to the quote above discussed how the bacteria found within your body functions as a form of protection. Normal bacteria in our digestive tracts can function to lower the pH, or acidity, of the environment. A lower pH makes it more difficult for dangerous bacteria to survive, while the healthy bacteria are used to it, and can thrive happily. As author Brendan Buhler puts it, “Just by maintaining building occupancy, [gut flora] keep bad elements from moving in as squatters, beating up the superintendent, ripping out the copper pipes, and turning the whole place into a crack den – a healthy biota makes the pH of our guts inhospitable and even toxic to many pathogens.”
Image taken from http://www.conqueryourpcosnaturally.com/_blog/Blog/post/Could_Your_Gut_Contain_The_Secret_To_Success_Against_Symptoms_Of_PCOS/
I have encountered this subject of gut flora many times throughout my academic career. It is a much larger field of study than most people might think. It is not just one type of bacteria that live inside of us, but thousands of different species, many of which have yet to be discovered. The article discussed that the different types of bacteria between two people are never the same – even among identical twins! Buhler writes, “Two unrelated North Americans will share only 10 percent of their intestinal bacteria, and a North American and a South American will share only 5 percent.” These numbers are astounding, informing us that the diversity of these microscopic organisms is immense.
These various species play a number of roles in the body. Of the trillions of bacteria, they can be broken down into three categories: essential flora, opportunistic flora, and transitional flora. Essential flora makes up the bacterial family found in probiotics like yogurt. They are the primary “protectors” against harmful pathogens, or the opportunistic flora. These dangerous species, which may sound familiar, include E. coli, Streptococcus, and many others. The third category are transitional flora, which to many healthy individuals, will pass through their systems undetected. In a person with a deficiency of essential flora, however, these transitional bacteria types can cause a lot of damage. Basically, these types of pathogens are only dangerous to those with compromised or weakened immune systems.
Image take from http://missinghumanmanual.com/?tag=gut-flora
The article discussed a study that I also found to be very interesting, which touches upon the “gut-brain axis”. In the experiment, groups mice were raised – both with and without gut flora. They found that those mice that did not have these essential bacteria died much easier when exposed to simple pathogens. They also noted that these deficient mice were also much more likely to take risks than their healthy counterparts. “If you take mice that are still growing and colonize them with the same bacteria, they will develop more typical fear responses. This suggests that our biota can influence brain development.” In summary, the study revealed that the bacteria of our gut are not only necessary for protection against pathogens, but also play a critical role in proper development of the brain.
I found this article fascinating. Each time this topic is discussed, there is always new information available. It will be very exciting to see how this field will continue to develop in the future as our technology improves. It is not a subject to be taken lightly. I have a feeling that we will begin to see many new medical advances emerge. This is only the tip of the biological iceberg!
