Stuck in the warm dark gut, your gut microflora depend on you to tell time. If you get it wrong, they get confused. And this is T-R-O-U-B-L-E.
For your body to run like clockwork, you need to co-ordinate your schedule with your body’s schedule. This is why to enjoy BETTER BODY CHEMISTRY you need to follow the old axiom,
“early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”
But what about your trillion or so, little helpers ?
They also run on a schedule. All life does….. light, gravity and temperature, regulate biological clocks.
But since your gut is a warm dark hole, how do your bacteria, tell time ?
Clock watching in the gut
They depend on you to know what they should / shouldn’t be doing. If you get it wrong, they get confused.
This is what researchers from the Weizmann Institute discovered, when they began to probe the schedules of bacteria residing in the gut’s of both mice and men.
The day in the life of a gut bacteria
Using faecal sampling and 16S sequencing, the team followed the comings and goings of different gut residents.
The little guys definitely followed a schedule.
Varying their own physiology throughout the course of the day.
As a rule, they opted to grow and multiply more at night, and live and let live during the day, with individual species, following their own personal routines.
So how did they know what time it is ?
Feeding winds the clock
Stuck in the warm dark hole, the team found, that bacteria used the arrival and/or absence of food, to gauge time. Actually, this is not something unique to bacteria, several other digestive system organs, including the stomach and liver, use the same approach.
But, shift work and jet lag, stopped bacteria being able to tick along nicely.
Who left the lights on ?
The research team found, as soon as the daily wake-sleep pattern was disrupted, the bacteria lost their rhythmicity.
The changes created fat mice. And potentially fat humans.
Huh ? Potentially fat humans ? ? ? Let me explain, when sterile mice, were given the jet-lagged humans’ bacteria, they packed on the pounds, gaining significant weight and showing signs of glucose troubles. This did not happen, when mice were inoculated with “normal” bacteria.
Timing is EVERYTHING
Our bacterial population serve us. To do this well, they need to co-ordinate their schedules, with ours.
To keep things ticking over, you need to eat “on schedule’.
The best schedule……..
- A big breakfast.
- A big lunch/dinner.
- And no nibbling.
A trillion assistants are depending on you !
Further reading
Your genetic fingerprint is a lot less human than you think
You have your mothers eyes, your fathers ears and your bacteria’s personality profile. The bacteria in your body outnumber you 10 to 1, their genes are you
Do you really only have 5 seconds to retrieve that cookie from the floor ?
So what happens in that 5 seconds. More than you think…..
Stress eruptions cause gut residents to flee
Stress creates a bad neighbourhood in your gut, since the good bacteria pack their bags to avoid the fall out turning your gut into a bad neighbourhood which leads to “bad” health.
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