How to Change Your Enterotype
What happens to our gut flora microbiome when we’re on plant-based versus animal-based diets?
What happens to our gut flora microbiome when we’re on plant-based versus animal-based diets?
There appear to be just two types of people in the world: those who have mostly Bacteroides type bacteria in their gut, and those whose colons are overwhelmingly home to Prevotella species instead.
Why does our immune system confuse unhealthy diets with dysbiosis—an overrun of bad bacteria in our colon?
The microbiome revolution in medicine is beginning to uncover the underappreciated role our healthy gut bacteria play in nutrition and health.
If the avoidance of sulfur-rich proteins and food additives can help prevent inflammatory bowel disease, might similar dietary changes help prevent relapses of ulcerative colitis?
Eating intact grains, beans, and nuts (as opposed to bread, hummus, and nut butters) may have certain advantages for our gut flora and blood sugar control, raising questions about blending fruits and vegetables.
The consumption of animal fat appears to increase the growth of gut bacteria that turn our bile acids into carcinogens.
Certain gut bacteria can “retoxify” carcinogens that your liver successfully detoxified, but these bacteria can be rapidly suppressed by simple dietary changes.
Protective properties of whole plant foods against diabetes include antioxidants, lipotropes, fiber, and the ability to suppress the estrogen-producing bacteria in our gut.
One week on a plant-based diet can significantly drop blood levels of homocysteine, a toxin associated with cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. Without vitamin B12 supplementation, though, a long-term plant-based diet could make things worse.
Peppermint essential oil should be considered the first-line treatment for IBS.
Rheumatoid arthritis may be triggered by autoimmune friendly fire against a urinary tract infection bacteria called Proteus mirabilis, which could help explain why sufferers randomized to a plant-based diet experience such remarkable benefit.
Sulfur dioxide preservatives in dried fruit, sulfites in wine, and the putrefaction of undigested animal protein in the colon can release hydrogen sulfide, the rotten egg gas associated with inflammatory bowel disease.
Fermentation of fiber in the gut may help explain the dramatic differences in colorectal cancer incidence around the world.
The toxic rotten egg gas hydrogen sulfide may explain why animal protein is associated with inflammatory bowel disease.
Diets centered around whole plant foods may help prevent Crohn’s disease through the benefits of fiber on the maintenance of intestinal barrier function and the avoidance of certain processed food additives such as polysorbate 80.
The majority of polyphenol phytonutrients may be bound to fiber, helping to explain the marked difference in health impacts between whole fruit and fruit juice.
How common is gluten sensitivity? Are there benefits of gluten? Why does the medical profession explicitly advise against people who suspect they might be gluten intolerant from just going on a gluten-free diet?
The reason why women who have more frequent bowel movements appear to be at lower risk for breast cancer may be because bile acids absorbed from our intestines concentrate in the breast and have a estrogen-like tumor promoting effect.
Too much choline—a compound concentrated in eggs and other animal products—can make bodily secretions smell like rotting fish, and may increase the risk of heart disease, due to conversion in the gut to trimethylamine.
Nori seaweed snacks may favorably alter estrogen metabolism by modulating women’s gut flora, resulting in decreased breast cancer risk.
Handling chicken can lead to the colonization of one’s colon with antibiotic-resistant E. coli that may result in bladder infections in women.
We’ve known our mental state can affect our gut flora, but might our good bacteria be affecting our mental state?
Though prebiotics may be preferable, probiotics may reduce the risk of upper respiratory tract infections.
Probiotics may help prevent antibiotic-associated diarrhea, and appear to speed recovery from acute gastroenteritis.
Expanding on the subject of my upcoming appearance on The Dr. Oz Show, a landmark new article in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that choline in eggs, poultry, dairy, and fish produces the same toxic TMAO as carnitine in red meat—which may help explain plant-based protection from heart disease and prostate cancer.
Young women at high risk for breast cancer given just a teaspoon of ground flax seeds a day showed fewer precancerous changes.
People eating conventional diets may ingest a trillion microparticles of the food-whitening additive, titanium dioxide, every day. What implication might this have for inflammation in the gut?
Exclusive breastfeeding for a full six months may, ironically, improve our children’s taste for vegetables—whereas children fed formula grow up with increased rates of inflammatory diseases such as asthma, cancer, and diabetes.
The water content of plant foods may help explain why those eating plant-based diets are, on average, so slim. Can ice be thought of as having even “fewer” calories than water, since the body has to warm it up?
Certain phytonutrients may tip the balance of healthy gut bacteria in favor of flora associated with improved weight control.
Certain good bacteria in our gut can turn the fiber we eat into an anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer compound—called butyrate—that we absorb back into our system. We may be able to boost the number of butyrate-producing bacteria by eating a plant-based diet.
The good bacteria in our gut can digest the fiber we eat, and turn it into an anti-obesity compound—called propionate—that we absorb back into our system.
Death in America is largely a foodborne illness. Focusing on studies published just over the last year in peer-reviewed scientific medical journals, Dr. Greger offers practical advice on how best to feed ourselves and our families to prevent, treat, and even reverse many of the top 15 killers in the United States.
The endotoxemia (bacterial toxins in the bloodstream) that follows a meal of animal products and results in inflammation and stiffened arteries may come from the food itself, rather than from one’s own gut bacteria.
Bacteria-eating viruses (bacteriophages) have been approved as meat additives to reduce the risk of Listeria and Campylobacter found in processed meat and poultry products, but there’s a concern they could spread toxin genes between bacteria.
The trillions of good bacteria in our gut can be thought of as an additional organ—metabolizing, detoxifying, and activating many crucial components of our diet. The formation of lignans from phytonutrient precursors found predominantly in flax seeds is one such example.
There are a few examples of plant enzymes having physiologically relevant impacts on the human diet, and the formation of sulforaphane in broccoli is one of them.
Since foods are effectively a package deal, what’s the best way to get vitamin B12 (cobalamin)?
Even when fiber and fruit and vegetable intake are kept constant, choosing foods richer in antioxidants may increase stool size, which is associated with lower cancer risk.