Writing Exercise #3: Brainstorm a list of behaviors that an individual could engage in that could cause changes to their gut microbial community. Pick 3 specific behaviors from your list. For each, discuss how that behavior could change the microbial community and the potential health impacts (beneficial, detrimental, neutral) that could result for the individual’s health.
Diet: The diet of a person could impact the gut’s microbiome heavily of a human. This is why maintaining a healthy and balanced diet is important. By providing the body with a balanced diet, you are making sure that you get the right nutrients in your body that can reinforce the strength of the gut’s microbiome and promotes the growth of diverse, healthy microbiomes.
Probiotics: Probiotics are live microorganisms which help promote healthy conditions in the body. These live microorganisms help to improve and restore the gut’s flora, promoting healthy microbiome growth and eliminating bad microbiota.
Stress: Stress can overall affect many parts of the body, even the gut microbiome. It is said that stress can cause the gut lining to be more susceptible to infectious diseases, killing a lot of the healthy microbiota that make up the gut’s flora. With this happening, a lot of healthy microbiota cannot help in the delivery of nutrients and digestion of food. This could cause many problems such as constipation, diarrhea, and indigestion.
List of behaviors: aging, stress, probiotics, antidepressants, diet, environmental factors.
