Today I'd like to tell you about new research that's so exciting I simply must share it! 

We've known for over a hundred years that tiny organisms live in the colon, but it wasn't until 2001, when Dr. Joshua Lederberg coined the term 'microbiota' to describe the ecological community of commensurable, symbiotic and pathogenic microorganisms that share our body space, that we have been studying the literally 100 trillion microbes that inhabit the human gut. These microorganisms outnumber all the cells throughout the entire digestive tract. 

We know that these gut microbes perform many important functions, including providing many nutrients and vitamins, producing short-chain fatty acids and foods for our gut cells, and acting as a protective barrier for those cells. They are also responsible for the development of our nervous and immune systems, and play a huge role in how we think and feel. They also help determine how much energy we have, how we use that energy, how we balance our blood sugar, and what foods we crave.

More recently, it has been discovered that these organisms, collectively called the microbiota (probiotics or normal flora), are not just isolated in the gut, but in fact live in every part of the human body; they live in the mouth, nasal cavities, ears, breast, uterus, prostate tissue, and even our eyes. Each body part has a specific environment of organisms, and these are named by the area where they reside: in the mouth they are called oral microbiota, in the uterus they are called uterine microbiota, and so on. It is estimated that only 1% of the DNA making up the cells you are carrying around in your body right now are human; the other 99% of our genetic material is from other organisms.

The new, exciting discovery is that all these individual organisms actually talk to each other, and with us, through a system of feedback loops, and more importantly, these conversations may be what keeps us healthy or creates disease. In fact, the National Institute for Health (NIH) has established a network of over 500 scientists and researchers to study this ground-breaking subject.

This microbiota conversation happens through specific amino acids (peptides) in a process called quorum sensing signals, or cross talk. These peptides are capable of sending signals from microbiota to microbiota and can also communicate with our human cells. Some sensing peptides promote the growth of new blood vessels, tumor cell invasion and metastasis of cancer cells, while others have significant anti-tumor activities. They can influence our mood, causing depression and anxiety, or a sense of well-being. They can create inflammation, auto-immune disorders, and chronic illness; or they can create vibrant health, good sleep and vitality. In one study, after microbiota were removed from mice expressing symptoms of Parkinson's disease and inserted into healthy mice, the healthy mice began to exhibit the same Parkinson's symptoms.

The types of microbiota that have been identified so far are:  

What creates the difference between the kinds of signals that are sent seems to depend on what you give your microbiome to eat. If you ask them to live on high amounts of fat, simple carbohydrates and processed foods, they tend to send unhealthy signals and create disease. In fact, there is good evidence to suggest that if they don't get a sufficient amount of fiber (through a diverse amount of vegetables) they begin to eat the very cells they are sitting on (your digestive tract), creating holes in your gut lining which lead to ulcers, diverticulitis, irritable bowel, Crohn's disease, and eventually cancer.