Friends with Benefits
According to the National Institutes of Health, 60-70 million Americans suffer from some kind of digestive disease. Here in Canada, the Canadian Digestive Health Foundation shares that over 20 million Canadians suffer from some kind of digestive dysfunction. That’s a lot of upset tummies! So, the million dollar question is…What’s going on with our digestive systems?
As you probably already know, some common gut busters include: eating too quickly, carbonated beverages, sugary foods, highly processed foods, and stress. But what about all those online interactions? A team of researchers from the University of Oxford and the University of Colorado Boulder investigated just that. Here’s what they found.
Sociable monkeys had a higher abundance of beneficial gut bacteria, and a lower abundance of potentially disease-causing bacteria. Amazing! And they found a strong positive relationship between the abundance of the gut microbe Faecalibacterium and how sociable the animals were. Faecalibacterium is well known for its potent anti-inflammatory properties and is associated with good health. Now that’s friends with benefits!
As our society transitions to online interactions, these important research findings highlight the fact that as primates, we evolved not only in a social world but a microbial one as well.
To learn more about the mind-body approaches to digestive health, check out these other blog posts:
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1. Palma, Giada, et al. "The Microbiota–gut–brain Axis in Gastrointestinal Disorders: Stressed Bugs, Stressed Brain or Both?." The Journal of Physiology 592.14 (2014): 2989-2997.
2. Conlon, Michael A., and Anthony R. Bird. "The Impact of Diet and Lifestyle on Gut Microbiota and Human Health." Nutrients 7.1 (2014): 17-44.
3. Simpson, H. L., and B. J. Campbell. "Review Article: Dietary Fibre–microbiota Interactions." Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics 42.2 (2015): 158-179.
4. Mayer, Emeran A. "Gut Feelings: The Emerging Biology of Gut–brain Communication." Nature Reviews Neuroscience 12.8 (2011): 453-466.
5. Johnson Katerina V.A., Watson Karli K., Dunbar Robin I. M., Burnet Philip W. J.”Sociability in a non-captive macaque population is associated with beneficial gut bacteria.” Frontiers in Microbiology 13 2022