Gut health & Microbiome - Why this is the key to long term health

I think a good place to start is... thousands of years ago, Hippocrates, the father of medicine, said, "All disease begins in the gut." This is how far back the importance of the gut was recognised. "Gut health" is one of the biggest buzz phrases and topics I'm sure you've heard used lots of times in the past few years. But have you taken the time to investigate this yourself? It is such a huge topic to dissect. I'm going to attempt to condense some key points into a small blog for you all to give you an easy read on the subject. I'll break it down into small pieces that may make it easier to digest (excuse the pun).

The gut microbiome: the microorganisms that live in our digestive tract, including bacteria, archaea, fungi, and viruses. There are up to 1000 species, which is around 3-5 pounds of bacteria in your gut. This amounts to trillions! This acts as a whole extra organ that's crucial for your health. It works hard as a giant chemical factory, helping to digest your food as well as regulating hormones, producing vitamins, excreting toxins and not to forget, playing a vital role in producing healing compounds that keep your gut healthy.

Our microbiome (as a whole): Did you know there are actually more bacterial cells in your body than human cells? Bacteria outnumber us by a factor of ten, making you more bacteria than human! This is our "microbiome," and it refers to all of the organisms that live in or on our bodies. Our skin is our biggest organ, and it's covered in its own microbiome. These bacteria differ in every area. For instance, the bacteria within your nasolabial folds are different from the bacteria a couple of inches away on your cheekbone. This is directly linked to your gut microbiome and hence the importance of your gut health on your skin. The bacteria in our gut regulate many of our bodily functions. This ranges from creating vitamins to controlling our immune system, our brain function, and one most of us are aware of, our metabolism and weight. They are absolutely critical to our long-term health. This is why it is almost always the best place to start helping people treat chronic health problems by fixing their gut. You may not attribute digestive problems to allergies, arthritis, autoimmune diseases, IBS, acne, chronic fatigue, mood disorders, or dementia, but it all starts there. Did you know that your gut wall houses 70% of the cells that make up our immune system? How crazy is that figure?

Leaky gut: I'm sure many of you have heard of this term. It's something so many people are now suffering with. If I explain a little about the gut lining, hopefully this will make it much easier to understand how 'leaky gut' is a thing! Your gut lining is vast. It's the size of two tennis courts (your skin is only around 1.8m) and is made of epithelial cells only one cell thick. To give you some frame of reference, take a human hair and cut it in half. That is the thickness. This is the largest area of our body that has exposure to the outside world. All that you inhale (this matters as it starts in your sinus lining), eat, and drink comes into contact with this membrane. Every chemical that comes in via your food chain comes into contact with this thin lining. Many things we consume or do not consume enough of (chemicals, antibiotics, etc.) They break down these junctions between each cell, making it leak. Right behind this area houses somewhere between 60 and 70% of your immune system (it's important to have the most immune cells here as this is the largest area exposed to the external environment, things you ingest). Hopefully, this makes it easy to see how an immune response is triggered when these things are able to leak through. A consequence of your immune system being activated is inflammation.

Inflammation: in understanding gut health, we all need to understand this term. The vast majority of inflammatory reactions start in the gut. So, inflammation, or "acute inflammation," is a normal biologic response to an injury. This is your swelling after an injury or your aching muscles after a workout. But chronic inflammation, often caused by diet and lifestyle, is something very different. When your body initiates an immune response, your body starts firing all these chemical weapons (inflammatory cytokines) to attack what is causing the inflammation. A certain amount of inflammation is good. It's your body's version of sending an ambulance out to fix something that's wrong. We need it to do its job of fixing and recruiting repair factors like increasing genes in your body to repair damage and fix things. The major source of all chronic inflammation in the body starts in the gut. This causes immune cells to be activated. This is often down to a lack of the good foods and fibre that your body needs even more than the bad foods we eat. When you feed the bacteria [in your gut] what they need, which is fibre, they start producing chemical products called "short-chain fatty acids. These are signalling molecules that tell your immune cells in your gut to become certain types of immune cells that prevent autoimmune diseases—"T regulatory cells"—and this is to stop your immune system getting so fired up that it starts attacking everything around it. These can only become this by being told to by these signalling molecules, and those molecules can only be made by your gut bacteria being fed on fibre. Now do you see why fibre is so important to your gut health? If there is not enough fibre to feed these bacteria, they will, not surprisingly, get hungry. At this point, they start to eat mucin (a protein produced by epithelial tissue), which is the gut barrier. This is a slippery layer that separates the immune cells from the bacteria in your gut. This is your gut barrier now getting broken down by your own bacteria. They are good for you, but they are hungry, so they'll eat what they can. This causes leaky gut.

So, I know this seems longer than you were expecting, but trust me, this is a very short version of how important gut health is to your long-term health. I know most of you that have found my website and, in particular, my blog, have done so because of an issue with your skin. Studies have linked gut dysbiosis to skin microbiome imbalances and conditions such as acne, psoriasis, and rosacea. When there are imbalances in the gut, it releases what are called pro-inflammatory cytokines throughout the body. Inflammatory reactions, such as acne or rosacea, are the most common indication that your gut is in distress. Another way in which your gut microbiome affects your skin is through improving digestion and nutrient availability. If you're not getting enough nutrients or aren't able to absorb the nutrients you are getting, then how can your skin be healthy? How can you be healthy? I hope you've been able to take away a new knowledge of your gut health and how this is directly linked to your skin and long-term health. I always tell my clinic clients that their skin is the largest organ in their body, and it is not a one-sided organ. Everyone spends lots of money treating their skin from the outside, and whilst that is great and I don't suggest you stop that as it has huge impacts on your skin in a positive way, many completely forget the whole other side of it, on the inside.