OK, this week’s column is not going to be Christmassy.
At all.
But as you’ll find, it is a gift, if you’re prepared to listen.
This column is about the findings of a Cork city doctor who has spent more than 40 years helping Cork people (and, well, other people - he doesn’t discriminate) with horrible problems like chronic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).
There are lots of things I could tell you here about Fergus Shanahan.
He’s a gastroenterologist.
He’s Professor Emeritus of the Department of Medicine at University College Cork (UCC).
He’s one of the top 50 scientists in the Irish and American life sciences sector.
He’s won loads of awards, written lots of papers and written and co-edited many books, and if I told you all the other stuff he’s done, I’d be here ’til Christmas and you’d stop right here because you just wouldn’t have the energy to keep reading.
The relevant things about Fergus Shanahan in terms of this column are that he founded APC Microbiome Ireland, a gold-star triple-A award-winning Cork research centre which also happens to be one of the world’s first microbiome research centres, plus he’s co-authored a new book.
At Microbiome Ireland, they investigate the microbes that live in and on the human body in bustling little communities known as microbiomes, and basically how their health impacts on our wellbeing.
Fergus has now put his findings into a beautifully illustrated and simply explained book about us humans and our microbes.
Crucial fact: Humans actually have several microbiomes - on the skin, the nose, the throat and the genitals as well as a very, very important one in the gut.
Crucial fact: Your microbiomes are as unique as your fingerprint - but, as Shanahan explains, while your fingerprint can only tell who you are, your microbiome reveals how you live and how healthy you are.
The reason for this book is that our microbiomes are currently waving great big shouty red flags at us and we don’t appear to be listening.
Worrying things are happening in our microbiomes, Shanahan says.
This is because big changes in the way we live, such as our increasingly sedentary lifestyle, the way our kids and ourselves are spending ever more time indoors, the fact that we have a greater consumption of antibiotics and other medications, not to mention the fact that many of us are now eating a very unhealthy low-fibre diet full of fat and refined sugars (check out the shopping trolleys in front of you in the supermarket next time you go), have all combined to change the microbes in our digestive systems.
And not for the better either.
When we don’t eat healthily and exercise sufficiently, our personal microbiomes start to become unwell, especially as we age.
Day-to-day, we don’t actually see how our unhealthy lifestyle is affecting our microbes. But all the same, the sicker our microbes get, the more vulnerable to chronic illness we become.
I’ll be blunt. The news is bad. Our microbes are changing.
Fewer of them are now able to digest fibre.
More and more of them have antibiotic-resistant genes.
In fact, it’s not surprising, says Shanahan, that humans are now getting more chronic diseases. We have already lost certain critical ancestral microbes with important Latin names due to our toxic diets and lifestyles.
This loss in turn brings an increased risk of chronic inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, high blood pressure, heart disease and asthma and metabolic diseases such as diabetes.
Mind your microbes, says Shanahan. Listen to them. Because almost every aspect of human lifestyle affects the gut microbes, for example.
And we are currently not minding our microbes at all.
Microbes are affected by stress.
They are affected by a lack of rhythm in our lives in terms of the sleep/wakefulness cycle.
They are affected by the kind of food we eat.
Our microbes need a diversity of good whole food with lots of colour such as fruit, vegetables, milk, fish, peas, beans, eggs, nuts and seeds, all foods that have no added ingredients and have been little altered from their natural state.
Our microbes need the fibre found in wheat, corn, rice and barley, onion, garlic, bananas, leeks, grains, yeast, fungi, leafy green vegetables, root veg, and fruit you actually have to peel.
What our microbes absolutely do not want or need are ultra-processed foods such as ice-cream, ham, sausages, crisps, mass-produced, refined bread, biscuits and carbonated drinks.
Because guess what, - and this is seriously creepy information.
If your diet is low-fibre and ultra-processed - and you can check this by seeing whether your stools float (high fibre) or sink (low fibre) - your microbes must find another source of food.
So… they begin to eat the sugar-coated proteins that form the mucus that covers the surface of the body’s mucous membranes such as the inner lining of the gut.
Essentially, if you don’t eat enough fibre, your microbes will be forced to eat you.
Listen To Your Microbes - A Graphic Story From Their Perspective, by Fergus Shanahan and Laura Gowers. Published by Liberties Press,Dublin. €19.99
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