ZEITGUIDE ‘HEALTH AND WELLNESS’ IMAGE BY KRISTOFER PORTER

How many bacteria live in your 25 feet of guts? Trillions.

So, it’s no wonder there’s a lot of interest in how to keep that microbiome healthy, and a corresponding rise in probiotic products.

What exactly are probiotics? The World Health Organization explains it this way: “live micro-organisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host.” Many foods—particularly fermented items such as sauerkraut, kimchi, miso, yogurt and kefir—supply probiotics to the gut. They’re giving rise to a booming probiotics market—estimated to be $32.6 billion globally and growing 20% annually. A portion of that market is supplements, which can contain up to 20 billion microorganisms per capsule.

Probiotics have their die-hard evangelists. One of our clients swears by his daily serving of Kombucha Tea, which he says keeps him healthy even as he travels extensively. But even as enthusiasm grows, no one knows for sure if probiotics are truly effective. The FDA has not yet really even defined a “probiotic.” And since every person’s microbiome—the mix of microorganisms in their body—is different, we don’t know if ingesting probiotic foods or supplements is truly giving us the right mix of necessary microorganisms.

“Probiotics aren’t vitamins,” ZEITGUIDE fellow, Marshall Votta of Leverage Health Solutions told us. “They are creatures that you’re actually putting into your body.”

There are hundreds of studies underway, all striving to unravel what’s living in and on us—particularly in our guts—and how to keep them at healthy levels. Among some recent findings:

• Researchers at the Institute for Immunology at the University of California, Irvine, have written that probiotics play “an important role in the development of the gut immune system, digestion of food, production of short-chain fatty acids and essential vitamins, and resistance to colonization from pathogenic microorganisms.”
• Many believe that probiotics affect how healthy we stay as we age: the average life span in Japan, where half the world’s probiotics are consumed, is much higher than most other countries.
• At least a dozen studies, most of them in infants or children, have found that probiotics can prevent or treat diarrhea.

Two other massive open-source studies are underway to, essentially, map the human microbiome the same way we did the human genome: the American Gut Project and uBiome. For a donation of $89, the latter will send you a sample collection kit and then sequence the bacteria living in your guts, mouth, nose, ears, even genitals.

Others are researching how gut bacteria are connected to the brain. Psychiatrist James Greenblatt, who has used probiotics as part of his treatment of eating disorders and other mental health issues, told The Verge: “The gut is really your second brain…. There are more neurons in the GI tract than anywhere else except the brain.” We’ve long accepted that anxiety can upset our stomachs, so why wouldn’t the neural connection work in the reverse? Why wouldn’t bad guts cause troubled minds? Along these lines, researchers at St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton are embarking on a study with a $1.5 million backing by the US Navy to see if probiotic bacteria could relieve post-traumatic stress disorder.

“We are only beginning to understand the true nature of our symbiosis with the organisms that live inside human beings,” Votta told us. “For those who are fascinated by the way we manipulate biochemistry through pharmaceuticals or inherited and evolved conditions through genetic programming, microbiology offers equal promise for expanding the capabilities of modern medicine.”

Keep Learning,

Brad Grossman

Creator, ZEITGUIDE
Founder, Grossman & Partners

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These weekly Zeitguide newsletters illuminate many of the leading-edge issues we continue to explore for our clients. If you would like to learn more about any of the leading edge issues changing our culture, please contact us at info@grossmanandpartners.com. Get ZEITGUIDE 2014 here.