You want to know the composition of your microbiota and metabolome
For your physical and emotional health: take care of your microbiota
The intestinal microbiota is the 100,000 billion bacteria that live in your digestive tract.
We have made a contract with these bacteria: we give them their favourite foods so that they can live and multiply and in exchange they produce real medicines that they distribute to our entire body.
"more than 90% of pathologies have their origin in the intestinal microbiota"
An unbalanced diet, exposure to a polluted environment, drug treatments and the way we give birth can weaken our intestinal microbiota.
The good bacteria die off and leave room for pathogenic bacteria which are then at the origin of the majority of digestive but also extra-digestive pathologies (brain, overweight, heart, immunity, gynaecological, skin, etc.).
In newborns and young children, the depletion of the microbiota will lead to digestive pathologies, chronic lung infections, eczema, sleep problems and behavioural disorders.
"we all have a unique microbiota"
Our microbiota is unique. This is why it is important to have a check-up of your intestinal microbiota at least once in your life to determine which bacteria are present in order to have a diet adapted to your microbiota.
If pathogenic bacteria are present, a specific treatment will be proposed to avoid or treat a pathology.
What we know about bacteria in the gut microbiota
Most of the bacteria that make up our gut microbiota are said to be symbiotic . That is to say that there are several thousand years the Man concluded a contract with them. We house and feed them properly and in return they provide us with substances that keep us healthy. These bacteria are classified into families and we know what is the proportion of each family to the amount of bacteria in each family to be able to stay in shape. If this balance is not respected we speak of dysbiosis.
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The other small part of bacteria are pathogenic bacteria . Pathogenic bacteria must be present in very small quantities in order to maintain a state of vigilance. If we do not take care of our symbiotic bacteria (poor diet, intense medication, high consumption of tobacco and alcohol, low sporting activity, chronic stress, etc.) pathogenic bacteria take advantage of this to take their place and create physiological disorders in the intestine but also by sending small fragments of themselves to other organs such as the liver, heart, brain.
The intestinal microbiota communicates bidirectionally , that is to say it receives messages but above all it sends messages, to all the organs of the human body. A depletion of its bacterial diversity with an increase in pathogenic bacteria may be related to intestinal pathologies but also hepatic, neuronal, cardiac, metabolic, bone pathologies.
While there is no doubt that digestion problems, inflammatory bowel disease are in most cases linked to a diseased microbiota , more and more studies are establishing relationships between the microbiota and obesity, diabetes, accidents vascular, cancers, neurodegenerative diseases, autoimmune diseases, anxiety, depression, sleep problems, osteoporosis.
As written above, our good bacteria produce substances that are beneficial to our health . These metabolites can be grouped together under the name of metabolome . It is important to know the value of these metabolites because a deficit or an excess will cause dysfunction of the target organ. These values will also allow us to know if an individual is eating correctly, that is to say that he brings in an adequate quantity (neither too much nor too little) of proteins, lipids and carbohydrates AND that he transports them. AND assimilates them correctly. What we put on our plate is not necessarily what happens in our cells !
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Our gut microbiota educates most of our immune system . A rich and diversified microbiota will allow us to have adapted responses to the various attacks that our cells undergo. : viral infections, bacterial infections, oxidative stress, cellular inflammation. A depleted microbiota will lead to an inadequate immune response and therefore the possibility of the appearance of autoimmune disease, chronic inflammation, cancer, chronic and disproportionate infections and viral and bacterial superinfections.
We know how to take care of our microbiota and we are starting to have enough perspective to offer simple and effective treatments in patients with diseased microbiota. But for this it is essential to know the composition of your microbiota . Indeed, each individual has their own microbiota. It is more precise than fingerprints to differentiate two individuals (like twins for example).
Completely reversible until the age of 3, it will be made up of an irreversible base from this age. True prevention of the microbiota therefore begins between 0 and 3 years.
What we don't know yet
Some bacteria are not yet known. The microbiota has therefore not yet revealed all its secrets to us.
Studies of the relationship between the microbiota and disease do not allow us to establish a cause and effect relationship between the composition of a microbiota and the onset of disease. What is the cause ? What is the consequence ? We don't know. But the analysis of the microbiota allows us to raise warning signals and put in place strategies to fight against imbalances.
Certain treatments proposed, such as the transplantation of fecal microbiota from a patient with a rich microbiota to a sick patient with a poor microbiota, have not yet been sufficiently documented to be validated for several types of pathologies. But current studies are very encouraging !