The gut microbiome is extremely important to our health. It controls nearly every process in our bodies, and what we feed it determines its health. Microdiversity is extremely important to the gut microbiome. Microdiversity means there are many different types of bacteria living in the gut microbiome. A healthy microbiome has a robust microdiversity.
To learn more about microdiversity, what it means, and the importance of microdiversity to our guts and health, keep reading.
Basics of the Gut Microbiome
The gut microbiome is made up of trillions of microorganisms: bacteria, protozoa, viruses, fungi, etc. The human body contains multiple microbiomes across different areas like the skin, eyes, mouth, and gut.
Each area requires different types of microorganisms to be able to maintain its health. While it sounds counterintuitive since certain microbes make us sick, the majority coexist with our human cells and help them to keep our cellular processes running smoothly.
The gut microbiome doesn’t live throughout the entire digestive tract. The mouth microbiome is quite different from the gut microbiome. The gut microbiome is housed within the colon, the last stop for our food to be digested.
A majority of our food gets digested by enzymes, acids, and other things throughout the digestive tract. Certain foods cannot be broken down by these methods and need a more complex process to be used by the body. This is where the gut microbiome comes into play. The gut microbes ferment these harder-to-digest substances so more nutrients can be unlocked and used by the body.
Once the foods are fermented, postbiotics are released and used throughout the body. Whatever is left is pushed on to be removed from the body.
What is microdiversity, and why is it important?
Microdiversity is important to the digestive process because you need the right kinds of microorganisms to be able to digest the foods you eat. If you don’t have them, your body will have a more difficult time tolerating foods high in fiber or other hard-to-digest foods. Most times, you’ll experience IBS-like symptoms like bloating, abdominal pain, and irregular bowel movements.
Microdiversity is the quantity of different organisms inhabiting an area. You want a large microdiversity because it helps your body in many different ways.
When researchers study different diseases or health conditions, they’ve noticed that patients with these conditions have low microdiversity compared to healthy controls.
What affects microdiversity?
Everything (from the moment you were born) affects microdiversity. Some things that are a little bit out of your control when it comes to your microdiversity include:
- Your mother’s habits when she was pregnant
- How you were delivered when being born (vaginal or C-section)
- Breast or bottle fed
- Genetics
- Cultural practices
- Diet as a child
- Socioeconomics
- What area did you grow up in (city, country, suburbs)
- Exposure to cigarette smoke
- Infections, illnesses, surgeries, or traumatic experiences
While you didn’t have control over things in your childhood, you do have some control over changing your gut microbiome as an adult. It’s true that the majority of your gut microbiome is determined by age 2 or 3. However, your lifestyle choices as an adult have the ability to change your microdiversity and, therefore, your health.
People with healthy habits have different microbial species in their microbiomes that set them apart from their unhealthy counterparts. The following are things that can affect your gut microdiversity.
- Diet choices — focus on getting more fiber and protein. You’ll also want to get more polyphenols in your diet because they often have prebiotics which feed good bacteria to produce more. Avoid foods that are high in preservatives and sugar because they feed the bad bacterial strains which can reduce microdiversity and lead to sickness.
- Activity levels — being sedentary lowers your microdiversity, while being active improves it. People who are highly active have specific microbes that help them recover faster from their workouts and make them enjoy it more. If you get into the habit of exercising, you can change your gut to help you want to exercise more.
- Medication use — using medications can lower your microdiversity. This is especially the case when using antibiotics. Antibiotics kill bacteria, which is great for bacterial infections, but not so great for our helpful gut bugs. Limit medication use to only what is necessary. Working with holistic practitioners, functional medicine doctors, or others who are knowledgeable in this space will help you to limit the use of antibiotics to only when necessary and have other options available to help manage health concerns in more natural ways.
- Trauma — whether you got extremely sick, experienced abuse, or had a traumatic accident happen, trauma in all forms affects the gut. Any of these negative incidents can lead to a lowered microdiversity and cause other health concerns to arise. Avoiding trauma would be great, but sometimes that’s not actually an option, so learning to deal with PTSD in healthy ways will help to readjust your gut microbiome to a healthy microdiversity.
- Stress — the stress response affects our health negatively. It causes a constant state of low inflammation throughout the body which stresses every cell and process. Stress also decreases our microdiversity.
- Sleep — getting enough sleep seems irrelevant most of the time. We know we feel better when we sleep well, but to say it is detrimental to our health sounds so dramatic. In reality, sleep is a major indicator of how healthy we are. While not everyone needs the same amount of sleep, having good-quality sleep is incredibly important across the board. Quality sleep will help repair damage from many of the other things on this list, and it helps your microdiversity to improve.
While there are many other things that affect microdiversity, these are hands down the most important and influential.
How to Improve Gut Microdiversity
If you look at the list above, you’ll see what things affect microdiversity and it becomes pretty clear what you can do to improve your gut microdiversity.
Prioritize making healthy decisions. This can seem difficult if you don’t feel well or are dealing with gastrointestinal issues to begin with. However, it’s so important to start small and work your way up.
Choose one thing from the list above to focus on. Once that becomes a normal part of your routine, add in the next one that you feel would help you the most. Eventually, these small changes will add up to a major shift in your microdiversity, overall health, and how you feel.
If all of these feel too difficult to get started on, try starting with Atrantil. Atrantil is a natural product that was created to help restore balance in the gut microbiome. It helps to feed the good bacteria with large polyphenols and prebiotics which adds to your microdiversity. It also helps reduce inflammation which can be a major source of cellular stress and feeling unwell.
Start with Atrantil and come back to this list to start working on your diet, sleep, and stress management. It’s the best way to take control of your health and keep your microdiversity high.
