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DrG's Medisense Feature Article
17041-Love_Your_Poop
Love
Your Poop
by Ann Gerhardt, MD
Apirl 2017
Print Version
Bottom Line at the Top:
The large mass of bacteria in stool is called the gut microbiome.
It contributes to a healthy immune system, makes essential vitamins and
amino acids, influences body weight and disease states and helps to
inactivate toxins.
Stool is basically bacteria, water, undigested fiber and small amounts
of other nutrients. Even if you don’t eat much, bacteria
will multiply and make stool. The human microbiome may consist of
a few or many hundreds of different bacterial species.
The more bacterial diversity, the better. Surgical patients with
a greater variety of gut bacterial types suffer from fewer infections
and heal better. A healthy gut microbiome stimulates and
regulates a healthy host immune system. Low diversity is
associated with infections, autoimmune disease, in which a
person’s immune system inflames one or more body parts, and
possibly even cancer.
Stool bacteria make vitamins B12, K and biotin, all essential for
health, which we absorb through the gut. Vegans, consuming only
plant foods which are devoid of B12, can maintain a reasonable vitamin
B12 status as long as the gut microbiome is healthy.
Killing off stool bacteria with antibiotics transiently eliminates this
vitamin source. Frequent courses of antibiotics can
completely change one’s bacterial population, bowel habits and
health.
Stool bacteria exist in a symbiotic relationship with their human
home. We use each other to stay healthy. Bacteria multiply
by feeding off undigested food for energy and old intestinal cells that
slough off, using them to make new amino acids (the building blocks of
protein) and reproduce. Then bacteria die and their amino acids
may be absorbed to nourish their human.
Some bacteria break down toxins to use for food. In this way,
they help to detoxify the human host. Eliminating stool bacteria with
laxative abuse and colonic ‘cleanses’ doesn’t
detoxify the body, it hobbles the body’s own mechanism of
detoxifying.
Our gut bacteria may also help to control our weight. A variety
of experiments in mice show that transplanting stool bacteria from
obese individuals into non-obese individuals causes the recipient to
gain weight, while bacteria from lean donors does not. This
has also occurred in humans who received a stool transplant for severe
colitis.
Undigestible vegetable fiber passes into the colon and is a preferred
food for types of bacteria that do not promote obesity. There are
two main families of bacteria in human stool, Firmicutes and
Bacteroides. Firmicutes, in the course of their normal
metabolism, produce more mass that can be absorbed into the human body
than do Bacteroides. That absorbed mass is a source of energy, in
addition to what calories are eaten, which might promote weight
gain. Firmicutes also produce acetate, which stimulates the
stomach to make an appetite-boosting hormone and makes the body less
sensitive to insulin, increasing the risk of diabetes.
It’s interesting that Lactobacillus species, the most commonly
consumed probiotics, are Firmicutes bacteria. In recommending
Lactobacillus, we may be promoting obesity and diabetes.
Yes, poop smells and it’s yucky, but that doesn’t mean
cleansing the body of it is a good thing. We should eat lots of
vegetables to feed our bacteria and avoid laxatives and too many
antibiotics to keep them healthy.
.