A Biodiverse Gut Microbiome Can Provide More Energy Than Coffee

If you’re not feeling your oats and lack robust energy, it’s a sign to tune up your gut-microbiome for balance and biodiversity of species.

Your intestinal microbiome is your ‘capacitator’ for extracting calories (energy) from your food. It’s directly responsible for creating ATP-energy through the prominent “tricarboxylic acid cycle.”

Your cells’ mitochondria (organelles that produce energy) rely on the molecules that your gut microbiome processes.

Today, it seems that everyone’s gut-microbiome is ailing. There are easy solutions. Pundits cite many reasons for the ailing gut-microbiome.

• Antibiotic / Steroid / NSAID Use – Ever! Not just recently. You might have lost an integral species many years ago if you used an antibiotic without simultaneously providing pre and probiotics. It’s complex prebiotics (soluble and insoluble fibers) that help develop a wide variety of species. Worse yet, there are antibiotics in commercial (CAFO) beef, chicken, and fish. So, if you buy meat at the grocery store, you are getting antibiotics that disturb your gut microbiome. Other prescriptives (Rx’s) damage the gut microbiome including, many steroids and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID’s).

A Biodiverse Gut Microbiome: EZ-Solutions:

EZ-Solution. 

Avoid commercial meat. Buy organic. Check with your natural health professional about “correcting the cause.”

• Chlorinated/fluoridated water. Municipal water is responsible for providing sanitized water to prevent microbial epidemics. But today’s municipal water also sends measurable amounts of pesticides, hormones (from people’s urine, and from throwing drugs down the drain), chemicals, deadly Triclosan antibiotic from Colgate Total toothpaste, and chloramines (linked to cancer, from using chlorine). Your gut microbiome does not appreciate tap water.

EZ-Solution.

Get a good water purifier. Avoid sources of tap water (restaurant soup and water, store-bought coffee, water fountains, etc.

• Toothpaste & Mouthwash. Your oral microbiome “seeds” your gut microbiome. It also provides nitric oxide to support proper blood pressure. Toothpaste and mouthwash with anti-microbials, Xylitol, tea tree oil, fluoride, etc. damage the oral microbiome.

EZ-Solution.

Use a prebiotic toothpaste such as Revitin, or a non-offensive toothpaste such as Dr. Bronner’s. (Amazon has both, maybe others.)

• Too Much Sugar and/or Alcohol. Eating refined sugar supports “sugar burner” microbial species, most of which are pathogenic. Sugar and alcohol can unbalance your gut microbiome.

EZ-Solution.

Use whole foods, not processed foods. Just say “no” to boxed breakfast cereals and desserts (97% of the time). Avoid products that list sugar on the label. Use berries, melons, and fruit to satisfy a sweet tooth. You’ll gain potent anti-inflammatory compounds and gut-friendly fibers.)

• Lack A Wide Variety Of Vegetables. Eating the same few foods limits your microbiome’s food supply to support only a few species. A variable diet (see Nourishment category blog) provides a better array of fibers to support biodiversity of species.

EZ-Solution.

Eat a Variable Diet. Include new, strange, odd, neglected vegetables.

• Lack Fermented Foods In Diet. The lactobacilli and other transient probiotic species in ferments do good deeds as they meander through your G.I. Tract. They support beneficial species, fight pathogens, and provide energy molecules to your colonocyte cells for smooth moves.

EZ-Solution.

Have a couple of tablespoons of raw, organic sauerkraut daily. [Not Eden Organic which is pasteurized to kill the species you need. Go figure.] And use other ferments: olives, pickles, water kefir. Make fermented vegetables—carrots, celery, jicama.) [Watch out for pasteurized Kombucha products with sugar.]

• Stress. Stress hormones alter your gut microbiome. The stress response is all part of Nature’s plan. Your cells have different performance metrics when stressed—when cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine are busy saving your life.

Today, you’ll probably not get chased by a saber tooth tiger. But darn those other stressors such as cell phone radiation, processed foods, pesticides/herbicides, T.V. news, and all the distraught emotional we feel What? You did not “like” my Facebook pix of my little doggie roller-skating over the edge of the Grand Canyon? That person must hate me.” Or “What? You did not comment on this blog?

EZ-Solution. 

Regular stress relief is no longer a luxury. It’s a requirement. An Epsom Salt & Baking Soda bath (2 lbs. of each in a warm tub of non-chlorine water) with your favorite essential oil, some inspirational music, and a really-terrific blog is a lovely, inexpensive way to nurture your inner being.

The amount of energy your cells receive from your gut microbiome is commensurate with your gut microbiome’s efficiency. Some species, such as Firmicutes, are super-efficient and need to be balanced by Bacteroides. Too many Firmicutes can contribute to obesity when they run wild on sugar.

Catch-22. If your mitochondria (energy-producing organelles in your cells) are tooled up to be sugar burners (as opposed to fat burners), and your gut microbiome is unable to metabolize glucose (sugar) from your food efficiently, then your body will store your food as fat. Saves it for a rainy day (which never comes.)

Healthy mitochondria can burn either fat or glucose based on availability. Exercise helps to increase healthy mitochondria via mitochondrial biogenesis.

A Biodiverse Gut Microbiome: The Geeky Story. If your gut microbiome produces too many calories from food, it can lead to metabolic syndrome (obesity, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, etc.) If your gut microbiome produces too many lipopolysaccharides (cause metabolic endotoxemia), then toll-like receptors become activated (inflammation). So does insulin resistance (part of metabolic syndrome).

Love Bugs. Your gut microbiome is an essential and integral part of your body’s life processes. For this reason, many people today use supplemental probiotics, make fermented foods, and use combination prebiotic fiber supplements.

When you love your gut microbes, they, in turn, love you. They reward your cells with healthy life factors that keep you young, smart, vital, svelte, and to the eye of the beholder, absolutely gorgeous.

Do something good for your gut microbiome today. Your gut microbiome loves a variety of foods, including protein, healthy fats, and vegetables. As we say, it’s not what you eat; it’s what your gut microbiome eats, that sets the level of your nutrition.