The Microbiome

Most of us go through life seeing all bacteria grouped together as “the things on the hand sanitizer commercials.” We see these as things we hope to avoid, wash away, or clean away. But most do not know that our body has a community of bacteria, parasites, and fungi. This is called the microbiome. These “bugs” coexist peacefully when we are healthy. Sometimes these “bugs” can even be seen as a supporting organ, as it can help everyday operations of the human body.

The average human does not have an adult like microbiota until about the age of three. There are lots of changes that occur altering our microbiota, but there was a study done recently connecting gastric bypass surgery and the microbiota. This surgery is not taken lightly, as it is done as the last option for severe obesity. There was little information available about what the surgery does to the microbiota. But, an experiment was done hoping to see what happened to the microbiota in the gut after this surgery. They did this in hopes to see if they could future therapies for obese adults, rather than the invasive surgery. The findings showed that the surgery did alter the structure of the microbiome, possibly due to the change in bile acid from the surgery. It is said that they would need further investigation because of interplay with toxicity and the metabolism, but they believe there could be groundbreaking findings about the microbiome for the future of solving obesity.

I have grown up with chronic sinusitis, severe deviated septum, facial skin infections, and many other things that antibiotics have been used to treat. Antibiotics seem to just be an integral part of my life. Even in my lifetime I have seen a shift in how much antibiotics I am given. When I was younger there were not as many hesitations with them. I am still on them a lot of the time for various things, but I have seen doctors become more cautious with prescribing them. The FASB journal discusses antibiotic tolerance and the microbiome. They talk about people, like me, who have had lots of antimicrobial therapies. They connect this to the growing antimicrobial resistance crisis. It is found that antibiotics eliminate lots of beneficial microbes, while wiping out the bad ones. There is current research is to further the discussion between the difference in active and oxidative metabolism of bacteria that contribute to killing members of the microbiome. Hopefully, this will educate more people on antibiotic resistance. Antibiotics are by no means bad because people, like me, will still need them, but we are hoping to stop the overuse.