You can eat your way to a happy tum

NAOMI DEVLIN explains why gardening, petting dogs and eating with your hands are the secrets to staying healthy

CAN you believe that we carry more than 10 times as many bacterial cells on our skin and in our gut than we have human cells in the rest of our bodies? We are in fact more genetically bacterial than anything else and these microbial communities that live on us and in us are called our microbiome.

Our gut flora or, more correctly, gut microbiota, act like an extra organ because they perform so many metabolic duties for us, metabolising substances that we can’t break down ourselves and fermenting undigested carbohydrates to produce beneficial fatty acids, vitamin K and B complex vitamins.

They help us to excrete unwanted cholesterol and maintain a good blood lipid balance. By interacting positively with our immune system, bacteria can even help us produce happy hormones and influence our mood.

Rather than focusing on different types of microbes being more beneficial than others, the current wisdom is that diversity of species is the most important factor in health. Microbes will colonise a gut according to where and how we live and what food we give them, not just which supplements we take, so it is important to get microbes from many sources and not just from a bottle.

Not all bacteria are beneficial and some can be very harmful in large numbers (MRSA, E. coli and salmonella for example) and many people now try to get rid of all the bacteria in their homes by using antibacterial products.

However small amounts of harmful bacteria have been shown in studies to prime the immune system and keep it fighting fit, reducing overreactions such as anaphylaxis.

These microexposures happen when we garden, stroke a dog or eat with our hands. It is still very important to take sensible precautions to prevent food spoiling and take care not to spread infection but you do not