Still. 
And yes – like you – I don’t see any slowing down any time soon in this extraordinary paradigm shift occurring in medicine and health. Which for us humans involves one humbling discovery after another.
Here we were thinking we made our dietary choices from a place of free will & individual preferences 🤣🦠
Thinking those microscopic mates, were making those B vitamins, and SCFAs and and and…for us & our benefit 🤣🤣🦠🦠
And while there’s a lotta love going on between our microbes and our micronutrients – in both directions – Pat Benatar said it best, “Love is a battlefield”
(sorry but I feel compelled to insert a link here for the youngsters – you’re welcome 😉)
The tussle over who gets to access those nutrients that are actually essential to both of us (the hostage and the microbiota) is an absolute turf war, peeps, and this battleground has seen some bloodshed!  The new new question being raised is how the prescribing of nutrients, especially at the higher doses we tend to use, trickles down to influence and impact those microorganisms who reside in the bowel. Directly – as a selection pressure we have, likely unintentionally unknowingly, introduced. Which species do well when exposed to levels of a vitamin or a macro or trace mineral that are simply unobtainable in the diet? Yes – research answering these questions has begun in earnest revealing some positive ‘prebiotic-like actions’ of some but not of course for all nor in all scenarios. Want to learn more about this latest aspect we need to consider when formulating our nutrition prescriptions?  You can either jump in and join us in the Nutrient Prescribers Program which kicks off next week to get across absolutely everything new in nutritional medicine or just dip your toe in here with our latest Update In Under 30: The Micronutrient Microbiota Universe

The world of health science went microbiota-mad a few turns back and there’s no sign of an end. Research continues to reveal the breadth of the GIT microbiota’s positive & negative reach, in particular, & with discovery upon discovery we’ve come to understand how often the microbiota are ‘managing us’. Both in terms of being integral to the success of our digestive, immunological, metabolic etc processes but also in a self-serving way, for example, directing our dietary preferences to satisfy their own needs. This has understandably prompted the question about the impact micronutrient supplementation is unintentionally having as a selection pressure on our gut microbes. Which bugs like which B vitamins when taken in excess of the amounts achievable in the diet? And which microbes flourish and which falter when we radically change their mineral exposure?

 


You can purchase The Micronutrient Microbiota Universe here.
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