What to think about the intestinal flora? What are the health implications?

Intestinal microbiota refers to the general term for a large number and variety of microorganisms that inhabit the human intestines.

The total amount of intestinal flora in healthy people is as much as 1014, which is about 10 times the total number of human cells. The sum of genes encoded by different microorganisms in the gut is 150,300 times larger than that of the entire human genome, also known as the "second genome of the human body".

At present, the bacterial species that can be detected in humans include Bacteroidetes, Actinomycetes, Firmicutes, Verrucomicrobacteria, Proteobacteria, etc., among which Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes account for 90% of intestinal bacteria as the dominant flora.

According to the biological role of intestinal flora, it can be further divided into:

1. Beneficial bacteria: such as bifidobacteria and lactobacillus, accounting for about 90%;

2. Conditional pathogenic bacteria: such as enterococci, Escherichia coli, and bacteroides, accounting for about 10%;

3. Harmful bacteria: such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus, Pseudomonas, Clostridium, about about.

Normal communication between the intestinal microbiota and its metabolites and the body contributes to the maintenance of the host's physical health. The gut microbiota can affect the health of the human body in different ways by affecting the host's immune system, hormone levels, and brain centers.

When the intestinal microbiota is disturbed, it may cause a series of acute and chronic diseases, such as diabetes, obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, neurodegenerative diseases and tumors.

To put it simply, the intestinal microbiota, that is, the intestinal microbe, is mainly composed of thousands of different microorganisms and more than 15,000 kinds of bacteria, the number of which is about equal to the total number of cells in the human body, forming the first protective barrier of the intestinal flora. In the human gut, there are many beneficial and harmful microflora for the human body. In recent years, many scholars' studies have shown that gut microbiota is associated with obesity, diabetes, depression, cardiovascular diseases, immunometabolic diseases, etc.

So, how much do you know about the gut microbiota?

These large numbers of bacteria can be roughly divided into three categories: probiotics, neutral bacteria, and harmful bacteria.

In recent years, obesity has become the third major disease that threatens global human health after cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases and cancer, and about 40% of the world's people face obesity and overweight. Recent research suggests that obesity may not only refer to traditional factors such as lack of exercise, unhealthy lifestyles such as overeating, and certain acquired diseases such as thyroid dysfunction, but also have a lot to do with people's gut microbiota. The main reason for obesity caused by the gut microbiota is that it breaks down nutrients in the body into short-chain fatty acids.

Cutting back on too many foods that contain high fat will reduce the production of short-chain fats in the body. In addition,Eating more foods rich in lactic acid bacteria and probiotics will effectively reduce the content of short-chain fats in the body, which can prevent obesity.

Under normal circumstances, the body's resistance and intestinal flora are mutually adapted, mutually restricted, and interdependent, and when the balance of the microflora is broken, certain diseases will appear in the human body. When the GT is cold, overtired, and weakened, the body's immunity decreases.

The intestinal flora is the normal microorganisms of the human intestine, which affect the body's weight and digestion, resist infection, and synthesize various essential nutrients. If humans lack these nutrients, it will cause a variety of diseases, they can also help the stool become softer, easier to excrete, help the intestines quickly excrete harmful substances, etc., in short, human health is closely related to the probiotic flora in the intestines.

According to relevant data, the normal intestinal flora is the patron saint of human health, is the essential microflora of the human body, they contribute a lot to human health, help digest food and absorb nutrients, as well as promote the body's immunity, by bifidobacteria, lactobacillus and other membrane flora through mass protection, the production of bacteriocin, organic acids, hydrogen peroxide and other substances, blocking or inhibiting pathogenic bacteria or conditional pathogenic bacteria to invade the intestinal mucosa to produce non-specific immune effects.

The health of the human body has a close relationship with our spleen and stomach, and Chinese medicine says: the spleen and stomach are the foundation of the day after tomorrow, but in the past, the health preservation only paid attention to the spleen and stomach, and ignored the important link in the spleen and stomach - intestinal flora. There are probably hundreds of billions of bacteria parasitic in the human body, and most of these bacteria parasitize in our gastrointestinal tract in the form of colonies, which is more than ten times the total number of human cells.

According to statistics, there are hundreds of different bacteria in the intestinal flora, of which more than 99% are anaerobic bacteria, but the density of aerobic bacteria in the cecum is the highest. Studies have found that these microflora, which weigh about two kilograms in the intestines, are compounded with all the elements of the human genome, and the number of gene expressions in these genomes is more than 100 times that of human genes. The intestinal microbiota is related to human diet, nutritional status, environmental changes, diseases, medications, and living environment, and is mutually symbiotic with humans, turning people and the intestine into a union, so it is regarded as an important organ of the host.

There is a great deal of international attention to the study of the gut microbiota, and there have recently been two large international projects, one is the Human Microbiome Project and the other is the Human Gut Metagenome Project. Its purpose is to study the correlation between human microbes and human health. From a research perspective, the intestinal microbiota mainly affects human health through the following five aspects:

1.The intestinal flora can produce some essential vitamins and nutrients, such as vitamin K, vitamin B12, folic acid and vitamin B7, etc., through which they provide some nutrients to the body. 2.

The intestinal flora is able to produce some bioactive substances in the body's immune response to regulate human physiological functions. For example, bile acids are produced to help the body digest fats. 3.

The intestinal microbiota can produce signaling molecules with pharmacological activity related to host metabolism, such as the intestinal microbiota can produce signaling molecules that ferment human dietary fiber into short-chain fatty acids, and cooperate with GX protein-coupled receptors to jointly affect the sensitivity of insulin in fat cells and peripheral target organs, thereby regulating the host's energy metabolism, and at the same time, the intestinal microbiota can also help the intestinal tissue barrier function to establish, maintain and stabilize. 4.The intestinal flora can compete with the exogenous flora, and the reproduction of the exogenous flora is resisted to achieve the stability of the internal flora of the human body.

5.The intestinal flora has also been found to produce an interaction through environmental changes, such as intestinal low temperature can change the composition of some mammalian intestinal flora, and the change of microflora plays a great role in fat burning, sugar metabolism, and ** in the animal body. For example, intermittent fasting can make great changes in the variety and quantity of intestinal flora, improve the rate of glucose metabolism of intestinal flora, reduce human weight, and especially make the weight gain of middle-aged and elderly people in the early stage drop significantly.

Through this article, we can know that the intestinal microbiota is not simply a parasitic relationship with the human host, but maintains the health of our human body through its own biochemical and physiological reactions. In the next issue, we will tell you what happens to the intestinal flora after you get sick. Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Gao Xiang, and I hope that what I have learned and learned here can help you with your health.

There will be digestive disorders, which can lead to digestive abnormalities, which can also lead to food accumulation, and can also cause abdominal pain, which may lead to gastroenteritis.

The first immunity is low, repeated colds. 70 to 80% of the body's immune system is distributed in or around the intestines, and the imbalance of intestinal flora is an important cause of low immunity.

Second, anxiety and depression, the intestinal microbiota plays a key role in inducing the onset of anxiety and depression. Some bacteria in your gut may make you feel depressed, while others can help you fight depression.