Tiago 05/01/2024
The importance of our microbiota
The book is very well written, informative and rich in references. It was a fascinating read, a pleasant surprise. In some parts, mind blowing. I had no idea that any one time, my gut contains about 1.5 kg of bacteria.
The basic premise of the book is that there is a complex relationship between microorganisms and the human body. As the book summary says, 'for every one of our cells, there are nine impostors hitching a ride'.
The author laid out the case that the so called 21st century diseases such as obesity, gluten intolerance, diabetes, autism could be related to problems with the microbes residing in our gut. Some of the evidence can be seen as speculative but she provides a large list of references. One can take at deep dive at them and see if the correlation between unbalanced microbiota and diseases is indeed causation. Of course, we should bear in mind that the going from mice experiments results to humans is usually not "linear". Other topics covered in the book are related to how our lifestyle can do good (or harm) to our microbiota.
The book has some good advice: eat fiber (they are good for your bacteria) and be careful with antibiotics (in non-serious cases they are like a nuclear bomb - you kill the pathogen but at the same time your microbiota can be devastated).