Yesterday I devoted several hours to reading a fascinating article on the connection between stress and the microbiome.[i] The conclusion: the lack of exposure to our “old friends” (those commensal organisms with which humans co-evolved) has caused immune dysregulation, leading to a greater susceptibility to the adverse effects of stress…and that stress, in turn, has … More Stress and Our Missing Old Friends
In my last post, I talked about how microbiome depletion results from immigrating to the United States (and subsequent dietary changes), which leads to obesity and metabolic diseases. I promised to tell you more about immigrant studies on biome depletion so today I am addressing a paper from 2 years ago in which researchers describe … More Helminths and Allergies: Another Look at an Immigrant Population
Last week, a really interesting new study[i] was published in the journal, Cell, detailing how immigrating to the USA negatively impacts the gut bacteria. Researchers looked at people from Southeast Asia and found that there was a significant reduction in the diversity of gut microbes with each subsequent generation, culminating with their microbiota resembling those of … More The Negative (Biome) Side of Moving to the USA