Monday, December 1, 2025

My Gut Microbiome Hates Me and I Hate It Back.

 So you think that your kidneys judging you is bad? My gut microbiome is a bad roommate, she turns off the lights at eight, throws out my new leftovers, and texts me paragraphs  about i should try a gluten and lactose free diet. Will I listen? no. But, I can tell you guys about how your microbiome can love you or make you question food as a calorie source. 

 Your gut is home to trillions of microbes — bacteria, yeasts and other that help digest food, modulate immunity and keep things in balance. When that balance gets disrupted,(like if you decide to eat a piece of bread), it can trigger chaos reactions in the microbiome. 

And its not just about lacking the enzymes to digest gluten and lactose, recent studies have show that the composition of the gut microbiome strongly influences whether lactose or gluten gets processed smoothly, or it turns into a roommate revolt(she emailed the landlord). A 2024 genome wide analysis using MiBioGen data found that certain bacterial families, for example Veillonellaceae— might protects against lactose intolerance while others (Anaerotruncus and Eubacterium rectale group) increases risk. 

For gluten related conditions like Celiac disease, certain microbes influences how the immune system responds to gluten peptides, or affect the gut barrier, causing leaky gut.  

How to survive your roommate? A varied diet with fiber rich veggies, fermented food prebiotics can help feed good microbes and helps them out compete the troublemakers, however this research is still in progress. 

In the mean time, will I stop pissing off my roommate by eating mac and cheese everyday? .....probably not.  

 

Han, Z., Ran, Y., Li, J., Zhang, X., Yang, H., Liu, J., Dong, S., Jia, H., Yang, Z., Li, Y., Guo, L., Zhou, S., Bao, S., Yuan, W., Wang, B., & Zhou, L. (2024). Association of gut microbiota with lactose intolerance and coeliac disease: a two-sample Mendelian randomization study. Frontiers in nutrition, 11, 1395801. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2024.1395801
 
Balaban, D. V., Enache, I., Balaban, M., David, R. A., Vasile, A.-D., Popp, A., & Jinga, M. (2025). Outcomes in Adults with Celiac Disease Following a Gluten-Free Diet. Journal of Clinical Medicine, 14(14), 5144. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm14145144  

 

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