First five minutes: Regarding microbes and human health, I was really interested in how many diseases were starting to be related to the inbalance of microbes in the gut. Especially in cases of diseases we normally didn’t think to be caused by our “healthy microbes” like obesity, IBD, or even ulcers or other chronic illnesses like gastritis. The complexity of the population of microbes in the human gut is astounding, but I was really surprised that scientists were trying to group together what was “normal” for a human which made no sense to me because I can’t really understand how the genetic diversity of humans can allow for normality. Everyone has a different environment, different diets, allergies , and even different daily portion sizes and things like medications and habits that can change the types of microbes in your gut. How can the bacteria be accustomed to all of these things? I guess that specific taxa and genus specificities can be grouped together, but can one species live in all of these environments and become used to all different kinds of factors that affect it? Either way, it’s cool that the differentiation of the “normal” (or what they think is normal) bacteria can become indicators for diseases of the gut.
Second free write: The bolded word I chose to do this next free write about was “imbalance”. The imbalance of the normal gut microbiome has been a way for scientists and doctors to identify what kinds of diseases are linked to the different species of bacteria that are found in the gut of a patient, whether or not it is considered normal. I wonder if they can become indicators before the patient starts to see side effects of the disease or if they can be indicators of other diseases that aren’t in the gut? Or maybe diseases that are in the intestines, colon, or esophagus instead of just in the stomach? I was also very curious about the treatment of such diseases that are caused by the imbalance of certain bacteria. I specifically remember one type of organism that was connected to the level of inflammation in the stomach, and when there was a lack of this bacteria due to some disease, the swelling of the stomach increased because that bacteria was not there to balance it out. Is there a way that something like probiotics can treat that? In regards to either replenishing the loss of the bacteria that was helpful or just replenishing all of the helpful bacteria that an antibiotic would kill off, assuming the patient is taking antibiotics to kill off whatever is causing the stomach to swell from this disease. How do probiotics even work? Are they live cultures? Or are they just nutrients and such that can help to replenish the little bacteria that may be left after the antibiotic treatment?
For my final paper: I think it would be really interesting to write about the imbalance of certain bacteria and how this imbalance leads to specific symptoms of illnesses found from the gut. Another idea would be to research probiotics because it seems like I have a lot of questions about them and how they work and to what extent they can treat these imbalances.
