Do Cultured Or Fermented Foods Provide The Best Cancer Protection?

How Can Microbes Promote or Protect Against Cancer?

Your gastrointestinal tract is the home of one of the most complex microbial ecosystems on Earth. These gastrointestinal microbes in your gut affect your digestion. But their influence extends far beyond that to your brain, heart, skin, mood, weight… and the list goes on and on.

Nearly 100 trillion bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other microorganisms compose your body’s microflora, and advancing science has made it quite clear that these organisms play a major role in your health, both mental and physical.

But it gets even more complex, as in addition to the bacteria there are viruses. The most common ones are bacteriophages and, get this, they actually outnumber the bacteria 10-1.  That means you have about one quadrillion of these viruses in your gut.

All these intestinal microflora are part of your immune system and about 80 percent of it originates in your gut. Researchers have discovered that microbes of all kinds play instrumental roles in the functioning of your body

Microbes can affect cancer susceptibility by modulating your immune system and inflammation. They can also influence gene expression, and appear to have the ability to alter the stability of your genes. A researcher notes that:“A failure of the intestinal barrier to limit host-microbiota interactions is also thought to be important. Anatomical separation between the host and microbes is a crucial first line of defense and is maintained through an intact epithelial lining and mucosal layer, as well as a sensing system that detects and eliminates bacteria. Consistently, ulcerative colitis, a condition that disrupts the barrier, increases the risk of colon cancers. Studies that have induced barrier failure in lab animals have also shown that carcinogens are more likely to pass through a disrupted gut lining, leading to increased tumor formation in local and distant organs.”

Gut microorganisms even appear to impact the efficacy of various cancer treatments. For example, a study in Science,  which mice that received antibiotics three weeks before tumor inoculation did not respond well to the tumor immunotherapy given. Mice bred to not have gut microbes also responded poorly to the treatment.

Even more importantly, cancer therapies that do not work by activating your body’s immune response will not work unless you have the appropriate gut microbes! Such therapies, which include certain chemotherapy agents, actually rely on gut microbes to eradicate the tumor… Gut microbiota is known to affect inflammation and metabolism, both of which are hallmarks of cancer. But DNA sequencing techniques have done much to further our understanding here as well.

“With the advent of metabolomics and deep sequencing techniques, researchers are beginning to decipher the role of specific microbes as well as specific global microbiotic profiles associated with different cancers. These discoveries are leading to new avenues of research into cancer prevention and treatment,” she writes. “The relationship between our gut microbiota and cancer appears to be complex, involving both specific microbial species as well as dysregulation of the global microbiota, called dysbiosis.”

Researchers have already linked certain microbes to specific cancers, such as:

  • H.pylori in gastric cancer. (The International Agency for Research on Cancer defines this microbe as a carcinogen ) Interestingly, H.pylori has also been linked to a reduced risk of esophageal adenocarcinoma, demonstrating the complexity involved, and the organ-specific effects microbes can have when it comes to their impact on cancer
  • Hepatitis C virus (HCV) in hepatocellular carcinoma
  • Chronic Salmonella enterica infection in gallbladder cancer
  • Haemophilus influenza and Candida albicans in lower respiratory tract tumors

The Microbe-Obesity Connection

Preliminary research  presented in 2010 actually revealed that transplanting fecal matter from healthy thin people into obese people with metabolic syndrome led to an improvement in insulin sensitivity. More recent research suggests that your diet alone can dramatically alter your microbial balance. According to Jeffrey Gordon, director of the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at Washington University in St. Louis,  a diet high in saturated fat, and low in fruits and vegetables allows microbes that promote leanness to overtake colonies of microbes that promote obesity.

“Eating a healthy diet encourages microbes associated with leanness to quickly become incorporated into the gut,” he says.

Speaking of obesity and gut bacteria, it’s important to remember that when you take an antibiotic, or regularly consume foods contaminated with antibiotics (such as CAFO beef, courtesy of their use as a growth promoter in livestock), you decimate the beneficial bacteria in your GI tract. As noted in a recent article by Eco Child’s Play,  which discusses the antibiotic-gut microbe-obesity connection:

“Looking at how poultry is fattened up with antibiotics when it is young, a very logical hypothesis is drawn that early antibiotic use in children could have the same effect.”

How Gut Bacteria ‘Guide’ Your Mind

The last health aspect I’ll tie in here is the connection between your gut health and your mental health. This connection appears to be so strong that some propose probiotics may be the new Prozac. According to an article published the June 2013 issue of Biological Psychiatry, the authors suggest that even severe and chronic mental health problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), might be eliminated through the use of certain probiotics.

Using MRI scans, Dr. Emeran Mayer, a professor of medicine and psychiatry at the University of California, is also comparing the physical brain structure of thousands of volunteers, looking for connections between brain structure and the types of bacteria found in their guts. So far, he has found differences in how certain brain regions are connected, depending on the dominant species of bacteria. As reported by NPR:  “That suggests that the specific mix of microbes in our guts might help determine what kinds of brains we have—how our brain circuits develop and how they’re wired.”

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