Shocking! The Microbiome and your health, a comprehensive course to be launched shortly

Do you know that inside you, billions to trillions of microbes take part in your everyday life? They make you be, yes!

What we used to learn at school as the 'intestinal flora', has turned out to be the 'future digital fingerprint', or "your second brain", or if you like, what makes you prone to acne, allergies, diabetes, or a fantastic health.

Well, as Hippocrates said ages ago, "Death sits in the bowel", or “Bad digestion is the root to all evil”

Yes, your microbiome is the ultimate, exciting research finding related to health. And if you do not believe me, let's revise some figures:

• The human body has more microbes than there are stars in the milky way
• 95% of our microbiota is located in the gastrointestinal tract
• 100 trillion symbiotic microbes live in and on every person
• Every person has a unique gut microbiota, which can serve as a fingerprint
• Genes in your microbiome outnumber the genes in our genome by 150:1
• Your microbes weight like your brain: between 2-3 pounds.

And since microbes live from what we eat, we essentially are what we eat! So, what are we if we love- and consume- chips, doritos, bagged corn pop, deep-fried delights, coke and giant steaks? How about fiber? Will it matter? How much? And for the sake of who's health? Ourselves'? Our microbiome's?

Please accompany me and my friends on this voyage to the microbiome world. Let´s get a quick look on the definition of microbiome:

And what is it that our microbiome does for us?

We acquire our surprising microbiome since birth, and it will determine who and how we are, how we behave; it will help us to be healthy and lean, or overweight, depending on our families microbiome, and on what we ingest: food, occasional drugs, frequent antibiotics, yogurt or sauerkraut, greens or burgers, Mediterranean diet and salads, or sweets and crappy food. The level of participation of the mixture of microbes inside us will betermine how healthy, prone to obesity or to allergies one person is. It may even determine your mental health, an occasional depression or a constant bad mood.

How do we acquire our MB? In birth, though the birth canal, and yes, the vaginal fluids are determinant for a newborn's 1st contact and initiation of his/her MB. Then mother's milk and a hugging mom-baby relationship makes it all:

On September 2017 meeting report of the Symposium "Microbiomes in Food Safety, Food Quality and Human Health" (Ridge, ILL), a thorough revision of the relationships with diet and disease were highlighted. Also discussed were the microbiomes of food, food animals and food manufacturing environments. Researchers, regulators and specialists of the industry (Danone, Nestlé, Kikkoman) took active part in this relevant meeting. Surprising questions arose:
How can microbiome knowledge be used to benefit human health?
How is the food industry using this information to improve food safety?
And most importantly: How are regulatory agencies using the flood of MB information to inform their decisions?
Findings and research abund, however many challenges are still floating in the air:

1. It remains unclear what a "normal" or healthy microbiome is, or whether microbiome changes induced by diet are good or bad.
2. It is unclear when food becomes a drug.
3. While consumers have embraced probiotics (commercial and babies yogurts; Lactobacillus & Bifidobacterium mixes), making health claims for probiotics is not justified.
4. Challenges persist for diagnostic analysis through metagenomics and NGS.
5. In the air still is how the overall microbiota of a food may complicate a pathogen detection.

It is expected that the clinical sector will continue to drive improvements for faster, cheaper technologies.

Fewer than 16% of consumers understand what the microbiome really is. Nor how it may help to improve the human health.
So, how much do you know about your microbiome? If you want to learn on your microbiome, how the diet can help it or change it for good, find a free course at Freshnhealth.com starting next week.
I am allocated at Teachable.

My name is Graciela Peña, and I can't wait for you to hear me out on what a fantastic thing it is to learn about your microbiome and what it does for us human beings.