How does diet influence the gut microbiome?

The good news is that diet is one of the main factors that impact microbiome. And so it gives us an opportunity to make changes for the better. It's not like something that we can't do anything about.

Diet is a very important factor to change microbiome. It's one of the main factors associated with it. Butyrate producers there have been some studies that have shown I like I said, butyrate producers are more important.

To have an increased amount of. So some studies have looked at what diets are associated with increase levels of you butyrate producers and one study did just five days of a fully plant based diet versus five days of a fully animal based diet for patients and just interchanged it.

This was not in myeloma, but it was a study that like looked at changes in butyrate producers and other microbiome factors. And what it showed is that after the plant based diet, there was an increase in the butyrate producers and after the animal based diet there was an increase in the bile acids. And so this tells us that shifting our diet towards a higher fiber content, which is food for the microbiome and a higher level of plant food can increase the good bacteria.

Another study that looked at diversity, where they looked at a huge number of patient samples and said which patients have an increased diversity based on their diet. And what they showed was that

patients that eat more than 30 different plant foods per week. So it's not per day, but per week. And it sounds like a lot, but it's actually not that hard if you think about it and put some thought into increasing the diversity of foods, is associated with better diversity.

So more types of food is feeding more different bacteria and that's associated with better diversity, which potentially could be better outcomes too.

Can diet influence microbiome?

Any change in diet can shift the microbiome within days.

So it's important to recognize that the microbiome between individuals can be quite varied.

Similarly important to recognize that if you take a population of individuals and you look at the variability of the microbiome between individuals, it's quite large.

However, if you sequentially monitor a single individual's gut microbiome, it does vary, but it varies much less than the variability between individuals.

So I think a single individual has some core features in their microbiome and a lot of variability around that and a lot of that very likely is dependent on their own immune system and their own sort of host factors.

And a lot of that is not it's an active area of study. It's not a clearly understood phenomenon.

Is having a diverse diet important?

So I think it's important to think about mixed grains, mixed beans all of that counts as different plant foods. So even if you eat like a lentil soup with five different types of beans or lentils in it, that's five different plant foods already. Or if you're having different greens in your salad, then that's counted as each one is a different thing.

Seeds, nuts, herbs, spices. All of this is included in the foods.

The biggest thing that in this society, which is now more civilized, we all eat one grain, whole wheat, we all need one fruit, which is maybe our favorite, an apple or a banana. Now we all eat the same vegetable, which is like maybe broccoli or potato or whatever it is we like. But we forget that there is a variety and we need to bring that back into our lives.