The thought that bacteria lives inside us in extremely distasteful particularly since we grow up being told that germs are bad, other people even have phobias about germs around them. The presence bacteria in our body maybe bad or useful, this could have made sense if where were aware of gut health and its connection to the proper functioning or our digestive system.
The useful bacterial may have an advantage beyond the wellbeing of the bile duct or the digestive system.The interdependent relationship between the amounts of bacteria present in our may be the key to our overall health and wellbeing. The phrase that is used for the collection of bacteria is microbiome.
What Is a Microbiome?
A biome is a community of organisms adapted to a certain or particular environment that have characteristics that make them suitable to live in that environment. The human microbiome is defined as the community of microorganisms that have grown and developed gradually inside
the human body. These bacteria they grown and replicate inside us at the same time help perform necessary body functions. The human microbiota is estimated to have been made up of trillions of living and active bacteria. These are further estimated to be composed up to a thousand different species.
While the microbiome refers to the overall community of microorganisms in the body, it refers more specifically those that reside in the digestive system meaning the biggest population of microbes reside the gut and other habitats including the skin and external organs of reproduction called genitals. Most of the microorganisms are found in a pouch that forms the first part of the large intestines which are the human gastrointestinal microbiota, known as collective microorganism that live in the digestive tract of humans.
How Does the Microbiota Benefit the Body?
One of the ways the microbiota defends us from microorganisms that cause diseases is by fully settling on the spaces they inhibit, taking up the sites in our guts and by using the available nutrients, compromising the space for the development of foreign microorganisms. Most of the microorganisms release protein molecules that act as catalysts to bring about specific biochemical reactions or compounds that destroy or damage the ability of microorganisms that cause diseases to replicate or affect our internal systems.
Generally we are more bacteria than human because our bodies consist of more bacterial cells than the human cells. The human microbiota has more than a thousand of bacterial species that function as an extra organ in our bodies ,each of them play a different role, most importantly for nutrition ,immunity and effects on the brain and behaviour while others are pathogenic causing a disturbance in the normal balance of microbes.
It is believed that humans develop in a womb and remain sterile and free from bacteria, viruses and fungi that make us sick when we emerge to the outside world however there are findings that the gut microbiome begins to affect the body while you are still in the womb during normal development in pregnancy which contradicts the saying that you are first exposed to microbes when we pass through your mother’s birth canal.
Our digestive microbiome takes close to a month or two to forms after we are born and it is during this time where the epithelium lining forms in the parts of the alimentary canal below the stomach and starts to secrete a protective mucosal barrier that is friendly to the beneficial microbiota
As you grow older, your gastrointestinal tract microbiome begins to become more diverse and the food you eat are a contributing factor to the diversity of your gut bacteria. This affects your body in a number of ways which are explained as follows:
- Digesting breast milk: Breast milk is the best food for infant nutrition and development, protecting babies from allergies and infections .One of the first bacteria that begins to grow inside the intestines of the babies is Bifidobacteria, a bacterial strain that is passed from the maternal rectum through breastfeeding that digest healthy sugars in breast milk essential for growth.
- Digesting fibre: fibre can be insoluble or soluble. Soluble fibre dissolves in water and interchanges as it goes through the digestive tract where it fermented by bacteria as it is absorbing water and becomes viscous. Insoluble fibre does not dissolve in water as it goes through the digestive system and does not change its form but it can also be fermented by bacteria in the colon. Fibre prevents weight by producing a feeling of being full without adding calories, diabetes where it slows the adsorption of sugar blocking spikes after meals, heart diseases where it reduces cholesterol levels and the risk of cancer.
- Help control your immune system: The immune system is a group of cells and particles that shield us from contracting diseases, by watching our body and responding to unwanted substances they see as threats especially those that cause infection .The communication between the immune system and the gut microbiome started at birth when our body were in contact with microbes. As we grow older the microbiota shapes the development of our immune system and in respond the immune system then shapes the composition of microbiota. The dialogue and mutual relationship is kept constant through out life and is the key for a healthy interaction among the gut microbiota and the immune system.
- Help control brain health: The gut brain axis is the communication among the gut microbiota and the brain. They play a key role in maintaining brain health and has an influence in the human behaviour and affects the mental illness.
What Happens When the Immune Senses a Pathogen?
The natural world surrounding us has different types of microorganisms that cause diseases called pathogens. Pathogens often harm organisms that provide shelter for parasites and they can be found everywhere on earth even in food, water, air and on surfaces. The immune system of mammals has developed in a way that it can defend itself from these pathogens.
It is made up of different characteristics that can perform a particular function, molecules of different phases that can coordinate fast, flexible shielding system that can provide protection from a greater number of these disease agents. This means that the immune system can see and identify itself and invading agents so that when it attacks the cells it damages and destroys pathogen cells and not its own cells. The immune system uses the innate or active system when it protect itself from pathogens.
The innate immune system is a mechanism that comes into play in the final state from when it recognizes antigens appearance in the body and tries to fight against all pathogens, then acquired immune system gives back information about the infections and piled up pathogen specific defences that have taken place in the past. It grows as time goes and acquires more information about previous targets so that it pass information rapidly to the future pathogens,
The innate immune system uses different mechanisms to attack microorganisms that causes diseases and the all the cells it has infected when the pathogens enters they enter the body. The cells in the lymph recognizes the specific pathogen associated molecular patterns when the pathogen enters the body (PAMPs), these include nutrients such as carbohydrates and proteins that are seen by pathogens and are different from particles inside the host. The PAMPs allows the acquired immune system to identify itself from other so that when it attacks it does not attack itself.
The immune system has clearly identified (specific) cells that are able see and identify the PAPMS. Phagocytic cells that engulf unwanted particles and microorganisms that cause diseases are able to identify the PAPMs through complementary pattern receptors (PRRs) on the immune cells surfaces.
They then bind together allowing the immune cells to free substances such as interferon, interleukin and growth factors that are secreted by certain cells of the immune system and have effect on the cells to inform the other cells to fight back.
The interferons will then inform the close by uninfected cells about the infection that is about to happen, making the cells to begin splitting RNA and to make smaller protein synthesis and this will indicate the close by infected cells to go undergo apoptosis .Then simultaneously the interleukins will carry out information between colourless cells which circulates in the blood and body fluids which are involved in counteracting foreign substances and diseases (leukocytes) to help bridge the innate and acquired immune responses .
Inflammation will by then created by the cytokines that where produces immediately when the pathogen was identified causing the blood flow to increase in size releasing more white blood cells to reach the infected area. This simply means that the microbiota can make the immune system to activate a response selectively so that inflammation can be kept in check.
How Are Indigestible Compounds Metabolized?
Carbohydrates are our micronutrients that are also referred to as our sugars, starches and fibres that we find in fruits, grains, vegetables and milk products. Some of these carbohydrates particles can only be digested by the enzymes realised by the microbiota because do not have or lack those enzymes. The body gets energy from the food that gets broken down in out digestive system when we eat, carbohydrates begin travelling the moment you start eating and stop with the elmation from your colon.
There’s a lot the happens between the point when we start eating carbohydrates , the saliva wets slightly the food being chowed at the same time it releases an enzymes that catabolizes the sugars I the food you are eating. The carbohydrates go through the oesophagus to the stomach when you swallow and the food is now referred to as chyme allowing the stomach to produce acid that will be able to destroy and kill the bacteria n chyme before you digest.
The chyme moves from the stomach to small intestines making the pancreas to secrete pancreatic amylase that will break down chyme into dextrin and maltose this will cause the wall of the intestines to produce enzymes that will catabolize the sugar further to single sugars. Once they are taken up they are then processed and kept safe by the liver as glycogen. The peptide hormone is then release from the pancreas and is used as energy.
