Gut Bacteria May Prevent Diabetes!

Scientists are looking for ways to use certain bacteria to treat, even prevent diabetes.

- Debbie Koenig

Even when you’re sitting alone in a room, you’re completely outnumbered. Inside your body is a microbiome of living organisms—trillions of them—that help you fight disease, process nutrients, and sometimes make you sick.

These little critters live all over your body, but the largest microscopic world is in your gut. Researchers are working feverishly on new discoveries that may uncover the secrets of the gut microbiome, which offer promising new treatments for diabetes.

What makes a healthy gut?

We’re all born with a clean slate, gutwise, and start acquiring microbes at birth. Everyone’s belly contains a unique combination of organisms, carrying a few hundred out of the roughly 1,000 known to exist.

That variation makes it tough to define a healthy gut, says Robert Karp, Ph.D., program director for genomic and microbiome studies in the Division of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition at the NIH’s NIDDK. “There isn’t just one healthy version,” Karp says, “and there are many different ways to get there.”

But research points to diversity as a crucial component of good health. “The general idea is that a diseased microbiome is relatively depleted,” Karp says. “It doesn’t have as great a variety of microbes as a healthy microbiome does.”

One danger to your gut seems certain: antibiotics. They appear to change your gut’s composition, and some people never recover from that— scientists can’t yet predict who will be permanently affected. “Don’t use them unless you absolutely have to,” Karp says. (See “Action Steps,” page 51.)

The gut-brain connection

Research suggests that variety matters because these belly bacteria perform so many functions, which they coordinate with the brain.