HOUSTON – The gut microbiome is a buzzword in health. Every kind of disease that can be studied is being looked at within the cellular level of the intestinal tract.
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What can we discover about cancer through the gut microbiome?
“It turns out that gut microbiome does a number of things that can affect cancer directly as well as indirectly,” said Dr. Pavan Reddy, Director, Dan L. Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center, Baylor College of Medicine. “Directly is the direct effects on a cancer cell itself and what we know is the way the microbes work is when we eat, we eat for two: we eat for ourselves, we also eat for our bugs.”
“That’s not our intention but that’s what ends up happening,” Dr. Reddy continued. “So, the kind of microbes we harbor is a function of what we eat and who we are. So, depending on that, you can shape the microbiome to a healthier version for the body versus a more harmful version for the body.”
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Dr. Reddy said we need to better understand the link between the microbiome and our immune system. More studies may also reveal how the gut can be manipulated to treat cancer or answer why cancer behaves differently in everyone affected.
“We are just scratching the surface... What I’d like to emphasize is the complexity. I think it might be fascinating to know we harbor more microbes than our own cells,” Dr. Reddy explained. “As an individual, there are more microbes in our body than our own cells, which includes the blood cells, skin cells, every cell you could imagine a human body is made up of is fewer than the microbes that we harbor.”
“So, imagine the amount of time we have taken to understand components of how our cells function, our body’s function. Now throwing more cells into the mix and the complexity is just mind-boggling,” Dr. Reddy added. “I think we’ve just started to understand many of these, but we understand enough to know that there are ways we can manipulate some of these to make our health better.”
In the meantime, there’s one thing you have the power to do to improve the gut microbiome, which is eating a healthy, well-balanced diet.
