Here’s one more reason to fill up your mug in the morning and indulge a little with dinner: Scientists have found links between consuming tea, coffee, or wine and having a healthier, more robust community of digestive microbes.
Conversely, eating a lot of sugars, whole milk, carbohydrates, and other typical snack foods can result in gut microbes which suffer from a lack of diversity. What does this mean overall? Your gut microbiome, according to researchers reporting for the journal Science, is directly influenced by what you eat and drink. And, therefore, so is your overall health.
Think of the microbiome as a society of (mostly) beneficial bacteria that lives both on the surface and inside your body. Throw in some fungi and viruses and you’ve got a fully-functioning community which helps you process food, regulate your immune system, and possibly even help combat everything from mood disorders to weight gain and bowel diseases, including irritable bowel syndrome. However, doctors are still figuring out what exactly makes up a healthy-looking microbiome because the studies being done on it are still relatively new. The Human Microbiome Project, for instance, only just began in 2008. Though scientists have known for centuries that microbes exist and are important, serious research of the gut microbiome in relation to the immune system and other bodily functions has only been around since the late 1990’s. It’s because of this that even relatively small breakthroughs are important in painting the larger picture of our overall health.
Dr. Alexandra Zhernakova, a researcher at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and the first author of the study, is making some beautiful progress on that painting. She, along with her colleagues, analyzed stool samples from 1,135 Dutch participants from the Lifelines-DEEP study. They were able to identify 126 factors consistent with changes in the makeup of an individual’s microbial community, including 60 related to diet, 19 tied to drugs, 12 linked to diseases, and four associated with smoking. According to Jingyuan Fu, a systems geneticist at the University of Groningen who worked with Zhernakova, “To our knowledge, this is the first study to systematically assess such a broad range of host and environmental factors in relation to gut microbiome and at such a large scale.”
The samples were collected at home by the participants, who immediately put them in the freezer. Within a few days, all collected samples were transported to the labs at the university, still frozen, until they could be processed by the researchers. This prevented any bacterial growth or other environmentally-influenced changes to the sample and guaranteed that every sample was treated in a uniform manner. Dr. Zhernakova praised the method of sample collection, explaining, “In situations where samples are sent by post at room temperature, the time of the delivery for every sample is different,” she said. “That situation can lead to the growth of bacteria during transportation and adds additional ‘noise’ to the findings.”
Once the samples were analyzed and compared to other data from the Lifelines-DEEP study, the scientists found that drinking tea, coffee, wine, and even buttermilk is good for gut microbes. The same goes for eating vegetables, yogurt, and fruit. People who eat a lot of yogurt and buttermilk have higher levels of the bacteria that are used in the making of these foods in their guts, too.
Sugar-filled drinks and savoury snacks, on the other hand, were linked to lower levels of diversity. Lower levels of diversity also correspond to having irritable bowel syndrome and smoking during pregnancy. Though the study does not specifically address the reasons why certain foods and habits influence the gut microbiome, it is clear they are beginning to get an idea of what foods and behaviours make for the healthiest diversity.
“In total we found 60 dietary factors that influence diversity,” Dr. Zhernakova said in a statement. “But there is good correlation between diversity and health: Greater diversity is better.”
Women and older people in general have a greater microbial diversity than men or younger people, the researchers found.
In a related study, researchers used thousands of fecal samples to create a catalog of digestive microorganisms. Species of microorganisms from at least 664 different genera were identified, taken from almost 4,000 adults in the United Kingdom, Belgium, the United States, and the Netherlands. Once the fecal sample collection was expanded to include people from Peru, Papua New Guinea, and Tanzania, researchers honed in on a core group of 14 genera of microbes that are nearly universally present.
Common to 95% of the humans sampled, these 14 genera and the species within these groups made up approximately 72% of their total gut microbiome. Individual people, however, can have very different levels of the same species of microbes from these core groups. These include species from the Ruminococcaceae family and from the genera Prevotella and Bacteroides.
Various aspects of biological function could be tied to the diversity of a person’s gut flora. For instance, those who hard and dry stools were more likely to have a low amount of microbial diversity. Conversely, those with looser and more comfortable stools generally had large microbial communities in their guts.
The most influential factor on microbiomes among participants in the study, however, was the use of a wide range of drugs. Clear patterns were detectable in groups of people who had a recent history of taking antibiotics, osmotic laxatives, benzodiazepines, antidepressants, medications for inflammatory bowel disease, antihistamines, hormonal birth control, or hormones to alleviate symptoms of menopause.
Despite some expectations to the contrary, however, the adult gut did not seem to be influenced by certain conditions of birth and childhood, such as being breastfed or having been born from a C-section. Further research would be required to see if these factors influence the gut while we are still infants, and, in turn, how long the effects last.
Regardless, both studies are key to our understanding of what truly makes a healthy body, even if scientists are still learning about how the microbiome works. For Dr. Jingyuan Fu, the future looks bright for our overall health — if a little unusual. She thinks the day may eventually come when doctors routinely collect stool samples from their patients. “It is becoming more and more clear that the gut microbiome serves as a sort of fingerprint that captures all kinds of signals about host health,” she said.
Whether or not that is in our near future, those of us who love our morning cup of Joe can sip with confidence. Just be sure to have a yogurt instead of a donut.
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