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Modern lifestyle bad for gut bacteria

"...it appears we have lost something along the road to modernization."

Modern westerners enjoy a lifestyle that confers many health advantages, including ready access to clean water and medicine.  Now it appears we have lost something along the road to modernization.

In a study published in April 2015, in the Journal Science Advances, an international team of researchers has shown that the bacteria living in the digestive tracts of previous uncontacted hunter-gatherers in Venezula, are the most diverse yet found in any human group.

This finding confirms what I have found in the last 23 years of practice, using stool microbiology testing.  Most people in our society are low in one or more of the beneficial microbes that inhabit or gastrointestinal tract.

The microbes have a balancing effect on the immune system that resides in the gut.  This could explain and potentially help prevent a host of chronic diseases that are common in the west such as asthma, allergies, and autoimmune disease.

Jeff Hunt,Naturopath