starvation

Who Knew? Gut Bacteria Contribute to Malnutrition

Posted on February 5th, 2013 by Dr. Francis Collins

Here’s a surprising result from a new NIH-funded study: a poor diet isn’t the only cause of severe malnutrition. It seems that a ‘bad’ assortment of microbes in the intestine can conspire with a nutrient poor diet to promote and perpetuate malnutrition [1].

Most of us don’t spend time thinking about it, but healthy humans harbor about 100 trillion bacteria in our intestines and trillions more in our nose, mouth, skin, and urogenital tracts. And though your initial reaction might be “yuck,” the presence of these microbes is generally a good thing. We’ve evolved with this bacterial community because they provide services—from food digestion to bolstering the immune response—and we give them food and shelter. We call these bacterial sidekicks our ‘microbiome,’ and the latest research, much of it NIH-funded, reveals that these life passengers are critical for good health. You read that right—we need bacteria. The trouble starts when the wrong ones take up residence in our body, or the bacterial demographics shift. Then diseases from eczema and obesity to asthma and heart disease may result. Indeed, we’ve learned that microbes even modulate our sex hormones and influence the risk of autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes. [2]