Microbiome for health and vitality Dr Robynne Chutkan

[Dr Robyn]

These are my notes from the academic lecture by Dr Robynne Chutkan. The link to the full talk is at the bottom. It should work as long as the site that posted it leaves it open to the public.

Live Dirty. Eat Clean.
Dr Robynne Chutkan

Your genes are just a suggestion, not a life sentence

Microbiome is all the micro organisms that live ON and IN us. Over 100 trillion. Your microbiome is more unique to you than your DNA

23k human genes. 3.3 million microbial genes. We are more microbe than human

To train your immune system it needs to be exposed early in life.

Identical twins don’t have identical microbiomes

Babies born via c-section (1 in 3 in the US) have higher rates of allergies, asthma, autoimmune disease and obesity

A breast-fed baby has a lower risk of Crohn’s disease later in life

The third most common ingredient in breast milk, human milk oligosaccharides (HMO), are not digestible. It is to feed the baby’s gut bacteria

More industrialized countries with more sanitation have higher rates of autoimmune disease due to leaving the farm for the factory

Antibiotics kill good bacteria faster than bad. Five days of antibiotics will kill one third of your good gut bacteria. No amount of probiotic will bring that back.

Probiotics are like emptying your bathtub (killing you gut bacteria) and then adding a cup of water (probiotic) and trying to take a bath

Yogurt is just less sweet ice cream

More than 50% of antibiotics prescribed are unnecessary. The average American child will receive more than 18 courses of antibiotics before their 18th birthday.

Most people don’t get sick because they come in contract with a bad bug. That happens all the time. Most of us get sick because we don’t have a healthy gut garden. Example – when a cruise ship has an outbreak not ALL the passengers and crew get sick. That isn’t because they didn’t all get exposed. It’s because some had immune systems that were able to fight it off.

When you switch to a plant-based diet you will notice that you aren’t getting sick all the time anymore

There is family clustering for inflammatory bowel disease. But this is NOT a genetic disease. It is caused by an environmental trigger. Families are exposed to the same environment.

Microbial diversity is a MUST. Without it, we die!

Microbiome is responsible for energy harvest – how many calories are extracted from food, stored as fat and used as energy. Plus, they consume calories themselves. So, calories in/calories out just doesn’t work. (How many calories does your microbiome use compared to someone else?)

We can predict obesity with 90% accuracy by looking at the microbiome. (That is impressive)

Within 30 hours of eating only whole-food plant-based the bile loving bacteria needed to breakdown meat and associated with inflammation and diarrheal disease dramatically decreases

MACs – Microbiota accessible carbohydrates, high fiber, low fat foods like quinoa, brown rice, beans, beans, beans (yes, she said beans three times)

You can’t just borrow healthy probiotics from the pharmacy. You have to grow your own. They have to be fed. When you take probiotics, most are dead within 20 minutes and the rest end up in the toilet the next day.

You have to grow your own garden by feeding it.

From her book, Gut Bliss:

“If you want to encourage growth of good bacteria, heal inflammation, improve motility, crowd out parasites, eliminate yeast, get rid of belly fat, dissolve gallstones, balance your pH, quiet down your irritable bowel syndrome, prevent diverticulosis, cut your risk of colon cancer in half, boost your energy, lose weight, banish your bloat and really glow, the single most important thing you need to do is eat greens every single day.”

Note – I am waiting for this book to be available at the library. I will do a review of it after I get a chance to read it.

Link to the lecture:

https://www.plantstrongpodcast.com/blog/episode-18-robynne-chutkan

[Dr Robyn]

Follow up information:

This article is a good, although a bit dense, read about how humans are damaging microbiomes and what we can do to stop it.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/long-live-microbiomes/

[Author]

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