The Bugs in our Bellies

"Probiotic" is a word that I learned back in 2011.  I was interviewing a cheese saleswoman at the local farmers market and she was describing their camembert cheese as probiotic. "It's basically the opposite of an anti-biotic," she told ten-year-old me. "It's the good bacteria, not the bad bacteria."

credit: sandhyamanoj.com

Fast forward six years and I am a junior in high school studying the effect of probiotic bacteria on our diet and mood. I am part of the high school science research program and have read tons of studies and articles on how the bugs in our bellies can effect our overall health and mental state.

How did I get here? It seems as if the microbes in that delicious camembert cheese infected me. Ever since then stories of their (literally) mind-boggling properties have followed me and piqued my interest.

In 2012, one of my favorite podcasts, Radiolab, aired an episode dedicated to Guts. They orated on the discovery of digestion, interviewed a man who battled with his gut (actually a family friend, Jon Reiner), and, most intrguingly, chatted with researcher John Cryan of the University College Cork who explained how eating probiotics can decrease anxiety and depression in mice. This amazing research led to an outbreak of similar literature in the "psychobiology" world and is causing people to think twice about the significance of the bacteria in our bellies.

After my first exposure, I consumed article after article, presentation after presentation, and book after book about the role of our microbiota. 

credit: The New York Times

• "Our Microbiome May Be Looking Out for Itself" by Carl Zimmer
• "The Scientists Who Want to Fix America's Guts" by John Swansburg
• "Missing Microbes" by Martin Blaser
• "Mind-altering Microbes: How the Microbiome Effects Brain and Behavior" by Elaine Hsaio
• "Can the Bacteria in Your Gut Explain Your Mood?" by Peter Andrey Smith

And just recently, due to all the hype around this exciting area of science, The Museum of Natural History in New York opened an exhibit "The Secret World Inside You."

Here is an excerpt from the exhibit description: 

"Our bodies are home to approximately 100 trillion bacteria living inside us and on us—a vast community known as the microbiome. The Secret World Inside You explores the rapidly evolving science that is revealing the complexities of the human microbiome and reshaping our ideas about human health, offering new perspectives on common health problems including allergies, asthma, and obesity. "

So, how has all this research effected me? Well, I think my meals can speak for me. Today for breakfast I had homemade granola with greek yogurt, for lunch I ate sourdough bread sandwich with pickles, and with my dinner I drank plain kefir. 

Cheers to our microbiota!

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Gourmanda