Shelly Fan writes: The morning before Christmas eve, I’m sitting here in the dining room munching happily on the bits and pieces of what’s left of our gingerbread house that was only erected to its full glory the night before. I have not consumed this amount of carbohydrates in over a year.

Inside, a few species of my extensive gut microbe community are screaming bloody murder.

When you eat, you’re not only feeding your own fleshy vessel, but also the 100 trillion of microbugs that thrive in your intestines. Hardly “along for the ride”, these bugs not only help us digest foodstuff, ferment carbohydrates and proteins but also heavily impact our metabolism and general health. Depending on their composition, they tweak our risk of cardiovascular diseases, Type II diabetes and may even cause obesity in humans. There’s tantalizing evidence that their reach extends to the brain, influencing mood, anxiety and cognition in mice.

However, the gut microbiota* is a fluid, ever-changing beast. In one previous study, researchers transplanted gut-free mice with fresh or frozen human poop to inoculate them with a microbiome of known composition. When researchers switched these mice’s plant-based diet to a high-fat, high-sugar one, the structure of the established microbiome changed within a single day: some species dwindled in number, while others exploded onto the intestinal stage, bringing with them their particular metabolic tricks. (*The word “microbiome” refers to the set of genes in the gut bugs).

Similar diet-induced changes have been found in humans. When babies are weaned from their mothers’ milk and switch to solid food, their gut bug community simultaneously go through tumultuous changes. The gut bugs of African hunter-gatherers vastly differ from those in people grown on a Western diet. But these changes take weeks, even lifetimes. Just how fast can the microbiome adapt and change to a new diet? [Continue reading…]