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- Ultra-high temperature and sterilization methods kill all microorganisms in the food, while milder heat treatments like thermization and pasteurization only kill some of them.
science.howstuffworks.com/life/cellular-microscopic/pasteurization.htm
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Feb 2, 2024 · Analysis of a common preservative used to kill pathogens in food shows that it affects beneficial bacteria as well, threatening the healthy balance of the gut microbiome. Foods like sausage, cheese, and beer often contain food preservatives derived from naturally produced antibiotics.
Cooking also kills many of the potentially harmful bacteria that can grow in and on our food, helping to protect us from bouts of food poisoning.
Sep 30, 2019 · Scientists have shown for the first time that cooking food fundamentally alters the microbiomes of both mice and humans, a finding with implications both for optimizing our microbial health...
Feb 2, 2024 · Common additives like sugar, salt, vinegar and alcohol have been used as preservatives for centuries, but modern-day food labels now reveal more unfamiliar ingredients such as sodium benzoate,...
- What Are Gut Bacteria and Why Are They Important?
- 1. Not Eating a Diverse Range of Foods
- 2. Lack of Prebiotics in the Diet
- 3. Drinking Too Much Alcohol
- 4. Antibiotic Use
- 5. Lack of Regular Physical Activity
- 6. Cigarette Smoking
- 7. Not Getting Enough Sleep
- 8. Too Much Stress
- How to Improve Gut Health
Hundreds of species of bacteria reside in your gut. Some of them are friendly, while others are not.
Most bacteria in the gut belong to one of four groups: Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria or Proteobacteria (1, 2).
Each group plays a role in your health and requires different nutrients for growth (3).
The friendly gut bacteria are important for digestion. They destroy harmful bacteria and other microorganisms and produce vitamin K, folate and short-chain fatty acids (4, 5).
When the gut flora contains too many harmful bacteria and not enough friendly bacteria, an imbalance can occur. This is known as dysbiosis (6, 7).
Both dysbiosis and a reduction in gut flora diversity have been linked to insulin resistance, weight gain, inflammation, obesity, inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer (8, 9, 10, 11).
Generally, a rich and diverse gut flora is considered to be a healthy one (12).
A lack of diversity within the gut bacteria limits recovery from harmful influences, such as infection or antibiotics (13, 14).
A diet consisting of a wide variety of whole foods, such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains, can lead to a more diverse gut flora. In fact, changing up your diet can alter your gut flora profile after only a few days (12, 15, 16).
This is because the food you eat provides nutrients that help bacteria grow. A diet rich in whole foods provides your gut with a variety of nutrients that help promote the growth of different types of bacteria, resulting in a more diverse gut flora.
Unfortunately, over the past 50 years, much of the diversity in the Western diet has been lost. Today, 75% of the world’s food supply comes from only 12 plants and five animal species (12).
Interestingly, studies show that those living in rural regions of Africa and South America have a more diverse gut flora than those living in the US and Europe (17, 18).
Prebiotics are a type of fiber that passes through the body undigested and promotes the growth and activity of friendly gut bacteria (19).
Many foods, including fruits, vegetables and whole grains, naturally contain prebiotic fiber.
A lack of them in the diet may be harmful to your overall digestive health (20).
Foods high in prebiotics include:
•Lentils, chickpeas and beans
•Oats
Alcohol is addictive, highly toxic and can have harmful physical and mental effects when consumed in large amounts (27, 28).
In terms of gut health, chronic alcohol consumption can cause serious problems, including dysbiosis.
One study examined the gut flora of 41 alcoholics and compared them to 10 healthy individuals who consumed little-to-no alcohol. Dysbiosis was present in 27% of the alcoholic population, but it was not present in any of the healthy individuals (29).
Another study compared the effects of three different types of alcohol on gut health.
For 20 days, each individual consumed 9.2 ounces (272 ml) of red wine, the same amount of de-alcoholized red wine or 3.4 ounces (100 ml) of gin each day (30).
Gin decreased the number of beneficial gut bacteria, whereas red wine actually increased the abundance of bacteria known to promote gut health and decreased the number of harmful gut bacteria like Clostridium.
Antibiotics are important medicines used to treat infections and diseases caused by bacteria, such as urinary tract infections and strep throat. They work by either killing bacteria or preventing them from multiplying and have saved millions of lives over the past 80 years.
However, one of their drawbacks is that they affect both good and bad bacteria. In fact, even a single antibiotic treatment can lead to harmful changes in the composition and diversity of the gut flora (33, 34, 35).
Antibiotics usually cause a short-term decline in beneficial bacteria, such as Bifidobacteria and Lactobacilli, and can temporarily increase harmful bacteria like Clostridium (36).
However, antibiotics can also lead to long-term alterations in the gut flora. After completing a dose of antibiotics, most bacteria return after 1–4 weeks, but their numbers often don’t return to previous levels (37, 38, 39).
In fact, one study found that a single dose of antibiotics reduced the diversity of Bacteroides, one of the most dominant bacterial groups, and increased the number of resistant strains. These effects remained for up to two years (40).
Summary:
Physical activity is simply defined as any movement of the body that burns energy.
Walking, gardening, swimming and cycling are all examples of physical activity.
Being physically active has a number of health benefits, including weight loss, lower stress levels and a reduced risk of chronic disease (41, 42, 43, 44).
What’s more, recent studies suggest that physical activity may also alter the gut bacteria, improving gut health (45, 46, 47).
Higher fitness levels have been associated with a greater abundance of butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid that’s important for overall health, and butyrate-producing bacteria (48, 49).
One study found that professional rugby players had a more diverse gut flora and twice the number of bacterial families, compared to the control groups matched for body size, age and gender (50).
Tobacco smoke is made up of thousands of chemicals, 70 of which can cause cancer (53).
Smoking causes harm to nearly every organ in the body and raises the risk of heart disease, stroke and lung cancer (54).
Cigarette smoking is also one of the most important environmental risk factors for inflammatory bowel disease, a disease characterized by ongoing inflammation of the digestive tract (55).
Furthermore, smokers are twice as likely to have Crohn’s disease, a common type of inflammatory bowel disease, compared to non-smokers (56).
In one study, smoking cessation increased gut flora diversity, which is a marker of a healthy gut (57).
Summary:
Getting good sleep is very important for overall health.
Studies show that sleep deprivation is linked to many diseases, including obesity and heart disease (58, 59, 60).
Sleep is so important that your body has its own time-keeping clock, known as your circadian rhythm (61).
It’s a 24-hour internal clock that affects your brain, body and hormones. It can keep you alert and awake, but it can also tell your body when it’s time to sleep (62, 63).
It appears that the gut also follows a daily circadian-like rhythm. Disrupting your body clock through a lack of sleep, shift work and eating late at night may have harmful effects on your gut bacteria (64, 65, 66).
A 2016 study was the first to explore the effects of short-term sleep deprivation on the composition of gut flora (67).
Being healthy isn’t only about diet, physical activity and adequate sleep.
High stress levels can also have harmful effects on the body. In the gut, stress can increase sensitivity, reduce blood flow and alter the gut bacteria (69).
Studies in mice have shown that different types of stress, such as isolation, crowding and heat stress, can reduce gut flora diversity and alter gut profiles (70, 71, 72).
Stress exposure in mice also affects bacterial populations, causing an increase in potentially harmful bacteria like Clostridium and reducing beneficial populations of bacteria like Lactobacillus (73, 74).
One study in humans looked at the effect of stress on the composition of gut bacteria in 23 college students (75).
The composition of gut bacteria was analyzed at the beginning of the semester and at the end of the semester during final examinations.
A healthy gut flora that’s high in friendly bacteria is essential for overall health.
Here are some tips on how to improve your gut flora:
•Eat more prebiotic foods: Eat plenty of foods rich in prebiotic fibers, such as legumes, onions, asparagus, oats, bananas and others.
•Consume more probiotics: Probiotics may increase the abundance of healthy gut bacteria. Fermented foods, such as yogurt, kimchi, kefir and tempeh, are all excellent sources. You could also start taking a probiotic supplement.
•Make time for quality sleep: To improve sleep quality, try cutting out caffeine late in the day, sleeping in complete darkness and making a structured sleep routine so that you go to sleep and wake up at the same time each day.
•Reduce stress: Regular exercise, meditation and deep breathing exercises may help reduce your stress levels. If you regularly feel overwhelmed with stress, you may want to consider seeing a psychologist.
Aug 8, 2024 · Many of these microorganisms can survive the radiation that warms food, challenging the long-held belief that microwaves successfully kill bacteria that may be harmful to human health.
Oct 29, 2021 · Learn if thoroughly cooking meat, poultry, and vegetables can kill off salmonella or other foodborne pathogens such as E.Coli and listeria.
