Thoughts On the Microbiome

Disclaimer: The following represents my personal opinion, and just like everyone else, I may be wrong about some things.

What is a healthy microbiome?

The current state of microbiome research is quite crappy and there are a lot of gut-wrenching questions about causality. The billions of dollars put into this field have given us a lot of “it depends”. Among the major findings were that “microbial diversity is good” and “certain species of lactobacilli and bifidobacteria are good”.

Conversely, dysbiosis (a microbiome imbalance) is often characterized by decreased bacterial diversity. Some hypothesize that increased species richness prevents a single species from turning pathogenic via quorum sensing (a fancy word for intercellular communication between bacteria), which may change bacterial gene expression and behavior from “just passively hanging out” to becoming more aggressive.

In states of dysbiosis, there may also be a flourishing of “bad” bacteria (though nobody really knows who the bad guys really are and whether they are causal or coincidental).

To add further complexity, one person’s healthy gut microbiome may cause issues for someone else as the same species of bacteria may behave quite differently in different environments.

How important is a healthy microbiome?

The above is only a fraction of the article. This article is currently undergoing final revisions and is expected to be published within the next few weeks to months. To receive a notification upon its release, sign up for my newsletter.