FOOD FERMENTATION(common knowledge)RELATED TO BACTERIA AND MICROBIOME

research book

raya stefanova module : 4department : man and well-being

teachers : FORMA FANTASMA

The process of fermenting foodsto preserve them and to make them more digestible and more nutritious- is as old as humanity. From the tropics- where casava is thrown into a hole in the ground to allow it to soften and sweeten- to the Arctis- where fish are customarily etten “rotten” to the consistency of ice cream- fermentated foods are valued for their health-giving properties and for their taste.

Unfortunately, fermented foods have largely disappeared from the Western diet, much to the determint of our health and economy.

Historical facts

Researchers have noted that many of the most long-lived people throughout the globe take advantage of the power of fermented foods to capture greater health. In Japan, tofu, miso and natto reign supreme. In Central Asia, kumis (fermented mare milk), kefir and shubat (fermented camel milk) are consumed. People of India and the Middle East enjoy fermented pickles, yogurts and torshi (mixed vegetables). Europeans have sauerkraut, kefir, crème fraiche and rakfisk (salted, fermented trout). In the Americas we have kombucha, standard pickling and chocolate; Pacific Islanders have poi (fermented, mashed taro root) and something called kanga pirau, or rotten corn.

Fermented foods can be important way to build your intestinal health and immune defenses.

The yogurt and the sauerkraut sold at the store may have little to no live active lacto-bacteria cultures because of the pasteurization, which kills bacteria.

1 Increase gut flora

2 Clearer, smarted, sharper thinking mind

3 Massively boost and heal your immune system

4 Detox

5 Beautiful skin

6 Essential for nutrition

7 biological enrichment of protein, amino acids and vitamins

8 Food last longer

9 Promote weight loss

10 pH balance

11 Eliminating antinutrients

12 Taste

Benefits of Fermented Foods

Common beneficial bacteria - probiotics

Lactobacillus acidophilus • Works in the small intestine, strongly probiotic

Bifidobacterium bifidum • Works in the large intestine, strongly probiotic

Lactobacillus reuteri • One of the fastest colonizing probiotics available

Streptococcus thermophilus • Beneficial to GIT function, found in cultured foods, especially yogurt

Lactobacillus delbrueckii • Helps with lactose intolerance, beneficial to immune function

Lactobacillus bulgaricus • Subspecies of L. delbrueckii, ferments lactose

HEALTHY BACTERIA FOODS

yogurt sauerkraut kambucha

misokefirtempeh

The human body contains 10 times more bacteria than human cells

There is a strong connection between the fermented foods and human health and they meet in the ecosystem of the gut.

The problem is that it is very easy to disturb this ecosystem and create an imbalance. In a normal gut, the good bacteria will hold the bad bacteria in balance. Tip the balance and the bad bacteria and yeasts will grow and multiply, causing all sorts of health problems.

The most common way to upset the balance of good and bad bacteria is the use of antibiotics. The good bacteria in your gut are very susceptible to damage caused by antibiotics.

Other things that can damage good bacteria include ingesting too much sugar and processed foods, alcohol, drugs, and even stress. Toxins in our environment – including food preservatives, additives, and colorings – all make it difficult for the good bacteria to thrive.

Understanding the ecosystem of the ecosystem of the gut

1. Developing Gut FloraThe bacteria that inhabit the gut early in life help the cells of the gut grow and develop. They also help to train the immune system. The gut flora actually work in concert with the immune system in order to help it grow and develop, and to help fight bacterial and other infections as we mature.

2. Digesting FoodThe various sections of the colon contain different bacteria and they each have distinct jobs. The bacteria in the first part of the colon help to ferment and digest carbohydrates, and the ones in the latter part of the colon help to digest fats and proteins.

3. Deriving NutritionSince the bacteria in the colon are digesting foods that were missed earlier in the digestive process, they are helping us to absorb nutrients that would not otherwise have been absorbed. In a way, the bacteria in the colon represent a second stomach and digestive enzyme system.

4. PolicingOne of the most important roles bacteria play is keeping undesirable bacteria and fungi (yeasts) in check. Healthy bacteria produce toxins that make it hard for bad bacteria like Clostridium to grow.

Harmful bacteria and yeasts grow when there is not a strong population of good bacteria around. In fact, experimentally, animals with low amounts of good bacteria are very easy to infect with bad bacteria.

Campylobacter

Bacteroides

Prevotella

Porhyromonas

Actinomyces

Corynebacterium

Streptococcus

Lactobacillus

Staphylococcus

Ruminococcus

Clostridium

Anaerococcus

Salenomonas

Vellonella

Fusobacterium

Escherichia

Haemophilus

Acinetobacter

Neisseria

BRAINThe brain is walled off from the microbiome by a series of biochemical moats and ramparts known as the blood-brain barrier. But there are indirect ways for microbes to change our minds. Bacteria in the gut release compounds into the bloodstream that pass through the blood-brain barrier; gut microbes can also trigger immunological and hormonal signals that penetrate the barrier. Together, these signals have been shown to influence hunger; one study of mice found that changing the gut bacteria even affected personality.

FACEThink about a mountain: Climbing from sea level to summit takes you through several ecosystems, each with vegetation and animals adapted to its particular conditions. Our skin, too, has many zones, each fostering a different balance of species. The face alone has several of these microclimates: The forehead and creases along the nose are greasy, for instance, so bacteria there are adapted to feeding on oils; microbes in other areas thrive on sweat, perhaps extracting nitrogen from it.

EARMicrobes will worm their way into any place they can. In July, a team based at the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Flagstaff, Arizona, published an investigation of life inside the ear, based on samples from an 8-year-old boy with a chronic ear infection. The researchers found 11 species of bacteria, many of them new to science. They also were able to trace the origin of the bacteria — not to a playground or a bathroom but to the boy’s own insides. The germs had migrated from his adenoids, possibly by way of the eustachian tube.

MOUTHOur mouths are loaded with more than 500 species of microbes, but they’re not all the same from one person to the next. Scientists analyzed three mouths (see below) and found 818 species in total, a quarter of which were not shared by any of the subjects. Roughly half of the total (387) were shared by all three, leading researchers to conclude that these might represent a “core” microbiome for the oral cavity. What’s clear is that the balance in each person’s mouth helps shut out bugs that cause tooth decay and other maladies.

THROATEver since Van Leeuwenhoek, scientists who study the microbiome have focused mainly on bacteria. But increasingly, that spotlight is expanding to include viruses. In the throat alone, there are at least 200 million virus particles in each milliliter of mucus. When scientists survey the viruses of the microbiome, 90 percent typically match no known species. And yet these viruses do not make us sick; instead, they infect the bacteria in our microbiome, possibly helping to keep our microbial ecosystem stable

SKINWe all know that cleaning a cut helps avoid infection. So it can be disturbing to find out that the entire surface of our skin is sheathed in microbes. Usually they don’t cause infection — in fact, immune cells, which prowl the sweat glands and hair shafts in search of invaders, give these hangers-on a pass. In turn, these germs help us out: Staphylococcus epidermis, for example, releases toxins that kill pathogens and also sends immune signals that speed healing. Keep washing your hands, for sure, but a whole-body sterilization would do more harm than good.

LUNGSUntil recently, scientists believed that healthy lungs were sterile. When they tried to culture bacteria from lung fluid, they ended up with nothing. But now that they can use sequencing to fish for microbial genes, they know that lungs host a thriving community of bacteria. Researchers have also found that people who suffer from asthma or other pulmonary diseases have a different balance of species in their lungs, which might account for some of their symptoms — sufferers may, for example, be missing species that would normally tamp down their immune response

HEARTThe more we learn about the microbiome, the more surprising connections we find to our health. Take atherosclerosis, once thought to result entirely from an unhealthy diet. Scientists recently harvested DNA from arterial plaques and discovered bacteria living inside them. Stranger still, many of the plaque-dwelling species are normally found in the mouth or gut. One of the researchers, Ruth Ley of Cornell, thinks that when these bacteria enter blood vessels, they might trigger the immune system to produce inflammation, causing the vessels to swell and form plaques

GUTThe large intestine is the microbiome megalopolis, with the densest gathering of microbes in the entire body: usually around 200 prevalent species and up to 1,000 less-common ones. As food moves through the stomach and small intestine, our own cells do their best to break it down and pass nutrients into the bloodstream. But much is left undigested by the time it reaches the colon. There, we depend upon microbes to break up starches and other tough molecules; they also dismantle some of the toxins in our food and build essential vitamins

STOMACHMore than 100 species of microbes live in the stomach, where they graze on the slime lining its walls. The most famous of all stomach-dwellers is Helicobacter pylori, which has been found to cause gastritis and ulcers — a discovery that won a Nobel Prize for two Australian researchers in 2005. But H. pylori’s reputation has improved since then. In the stomachs of children, it sends out signals that help the immune system mature. Youngsters who lose their H. pylori by taking antibiotics are more likely to develop asthma and allergies.

HANDSComparing the bacteria on subjects’ hands, scientists found that on average just 17 percent of the species on the left hand also live on the right.

The revolution (sience research on microbiome) is happening NOW!

About the uBiome project

“ uBiome is the world’s first crowdsourced effort to map the human microbiome. Come get your microbiome sequenced, learn about your body and be a citizen scientist!

uBiome has launched the world’s first crowdsourced effort to map the human microbiome. We provide direct access to cutting edge scientific research to the public in order to let people learn more about their health and contribute to scientific progress. Gathering this information is the first step to personalized medicine based on each individual’s own physical characteristics and health.

What’s the human microbiome?

The microbiome are the bacteria that live on and within us. It sounds kind of funny, but all of us are actually covered in helpful germs – we couldn’t live without them. Studies have linked our microbiome to how human health in thousands of ways. Many conditions – from diabetes to depression, asthma to autism -- are found to relate to the microbiome. And the microbiome also keeps us well.

What’s cool about the microbiome?

Like the rainforest, the healthy human microbiome is a balanced ecosystem. The correct balance of microbes serves to keep potential pathogens in check and regulate the immune system. Microbes also perform essential functions such as digesting food and synthesizing vitamins. Up to a third of the bioactive chemicals in the human bloodstream appear to be synthesized by microbes rather than by the human body – for example 90% of our serotonin (a neurotransmitter in the brain) is produced by bacteria. “

“Startup uBiome Will Catalog Your Microbes, Again and Again

Your genome may not change, but your microbiome will.”

MIT technology review

April 18, 2013

Antibiotics = Microbiome Killer

Too much preservatives and antibiotics in our food reflect to a poor microbiome which slows down human decomposition after death.

OBESITY TRANSFORMS THE ECOSYSTEMAverage number of species in a lean person’s gut: 783Average number of species in an obese person’s gut: 569We are what we eat, and so are our gut flora. When people switch to a high-calorie diet, their microbiome changes, with rare species becoming common and common species becoming rare. It also becomes less diverse. Scientists have tested the effect of the obese microbiome by rearing mice without any bacteria in them at all, then inoculating some of them with microbes from mice fed a high-calorie, high-fat Western diet and others with bacteria from mice fed a low-calorie diet. The mice that got the high-calorie germs became fat

“all disease beguinin the gut”

The human microbiome has been linked to autism, depression, and anxiety as well as many gut disorders, eczema, and chronic sinusitis. Unlike gene therapy as a medical solution for some genetic disorders, manipulating the microbiome is a bit easier, through solutions such as simply introducing healthful probiotic cultures into the system.

Understanding the microbiome and being able to manipulate it could provide cures for these and other ailments.

poor diet

drugs

“clean

lifestyle”

chronicstress

disease

Inflammation and oxidative stress

Disfunctional gut flora or gut dysbiosis.Increased intestinal permcability(leaky gut)

Poor health and disease

Improved gut

flora and

decreased

intestinal

permeability

(no leaky gut)

Decreased

inflammation

and reduced

oxidative

stress

Good

health

and no disease

GUT DIET

PROBIOTICS

PREBIOTICS+

poor diet

drugs

“clean

lifestyle”

chronicstress

disease

Inflammatioxidative

Disfunctional gut flora or gut dysbiosis.Increased

intestinal permcability(leaky

gut)

Good

health

and

no

disease

s

Poor healthand disease

ion and

ve stress

Improved gut

flora

and

decreased

intestinal

permeability

(no leaky

gut)

Decrea

inflamma

and reduced

oxidative

stress

GUT DIET

PROBIOTICS

PREBIOTICS+

eased

mation

ed

d

FERMENTARION TRATIDIONS

Bulgarian yogurt making

yogurt

sauerkraut