Being too clean isn’t what’s making us sick. It’s the loss of biodiversity in the bacteria and organisms that live in our bodies and work with the immune system.
A growing body of research points to the detrimental effect of unhealthy diets and the protective value of healthy diets – along with select nutritional supplements as required – for maintaining and promoting mental health.
Human activities have altered whole ecosystems with declines in species diversity, extinctions and the introduction of weeds and pests. But it’s not just the outside world we’re harming.
Allergies are reactions caused by the immune system as it responds to environmental substances that are usually harmless. But we don’t yet have a cure or the ability to prevent them from developing.
We spend much of our time inside buildings. What chemicals and microbes are in here with us? And how do they affect each other? One scientist collects dust to find out.
Our personal collection of microbes is vital for gut health - but new research shows that large-scale analysis of our ‘microbiomes’ can show if a population is fat or lean. The answer is in sewage.
We’ve long known that that the gut is responsible for digesting food and expelling the waste. More recently, we realised the gut has many more important functions and acts a type of mini-brain, affecting…
One of medicine’s greatest innovations in the 20th century was the development of antibiotics. It transformed our ability to combat disease. But medicine in the 21st century is rethinking its relationship…
Emma Saville, The Conversation and Penny Orbell, The Conversation
Microbial communities vary greatly between different households but are similar among members of the same household – including pets – according to research published in Science today. Microbes are everywhere…
Reema Rattan, The Conversation and Alana Mitchelson, The Conversation
The types of bacteria that colonise an infant’s developing gut are influenced more by internal development than childbirth or early nutrition, according to a study published today in the journal PNAS…
Mobile phones have become such an important part of our daily lives that they’ve started adopting our microorganisms, according to research published yesterday in PeerJ. James Meadow and colleagues from…
Akshat Rathi, The Conversation and Declan Perry, The Conversation
Trillions of microbes live in and on our body. We don’t yet fully understand how these microbial ecosystems develop or the full extent to which they influence our health. Some provide essential nutrients…
Probiotics are something of a new dietary craze. Foods contain healthy “probiotic” bacteria, and these microbes can promote good gastrointestinal (GI) health. But what about your brain? Apparently, bacteria…
Bacteria in the human gut, which are present in the billions, can change the effect of medicine. This has been demonstrated for at least 40 drugs. But, until now, nobody knew exactly how. New research…
Antibiotics joined our growing arsenal of weapons in the fight against disease over seventy years ago. Their target – the bacterial infections that putrefied our wounds, filled our lungs with pneumonia…