The digestive tract contains an estimate of 100 trillion bacteria and microbes outnumber the amount of cells in our whole body. Some of these are really important in digesting food, suppressing other harmful microbes and producing important vitamins essential to our health. Others harm us and add to diseases such as Crohns disease, obesity and ulcerative colitis.
Over the past years our studies of microbiology and DNA-sequencing has assisted us in understanding how these work more clearly and this was the point of the study. Associate Professor David Underhill PhD, said that for a long time now they have recognised that fungi exist in the gut but that this study is the first to investigate what kind, how many and if they are actually important regarding diseases. He went on to say they were ‘stunned’ to see how common the fungi were and that there were more than 100 different types that linked to digestive disorders.
Inflammatory Bowel Disease, or IBD, a chronic digestive disorder, is growing in numbers every day and Ulcerative colitis, a type of IBD, is known to cause inflammation and ulcers in the top layer of the lining of the large intestine so this study if very important in these matters. Symptoms of the disease include stomach pain, diarrhea, bleeding, tiredness, loss of appetite and weight loss and all these increase the risk of developing colorectal cancer.
The study is so important as it brings researchers closer to understanding how fungus contributes to disease as well as what kinds of fungus do live in the body. It worked with a protein called Dectin-1 which is produced in white blood cells and used to kill fungus by the immune system. They found that the protein protects against inflammation caused by fungi. Whilst the study was performed on an animal model it was important for human disease as they found a variant of the gene for Dectin-1 that is associated with severe ulcerative colitis.
What this means is that science is now finding the proof regarding inflammation and disease. Natural therapists have been saying for years now that inflammation could be the major cause of illness and we have a hard time making the general public understand this sometimes. This is because when we get sick we look for a cause that we can see. Inflammation is inside the body and creeps up on us. It creeps into our intestines by the wrong foods we eat and the denatured lifestyle we lead. It’s not like a scenario when you have a fight with your best friend and have a headache because of it. Illness begins unseen, like a snake slithering into a dark room. Usually we only become really aware of it when it hits the physical body. We tend to flick off the mental symptoms of negative thoughts, the emotional negative feelings and ‘soldier on’. Its only when we get physically sick that we take the time out to investigate. If we had taken the time out to tune into our bodies, nurture ourselves and slow down a little perhaps we would not be ill in the first place.
This study is one of the reasons that it is so important that we work together with science as natural therapists so that we can get a better, clearer understanding and a good health care system for all of us. Scientific investigation is the other side of the coin of natural therapy. It can provide the ‘proof’ that people often want for some of the things grandma knew instinctively. For many people this proof is important and it will contribute to their health for science to discover it so the more studies like this one the better.
