The Healthy Hazda do not have the “healthy” bacteria in their gut

(written by lawrence krubner, however indented passages are often quotes). You can contact lawrence at: lawrence@krubner.com, or follow me on Twitter.

Interesting:

Researchers have known for decades that the biota in our gut vary depending on what we eat. But the Hadza microbiome still turned out to be surprisingly different.

To study the difference between the ancient and modern gut, researchers analyzed stool samples from 16 Italian urbanites and 27 Hadza foragers, of both genders.

The Italians’ gut flora was generally what they expected in Western diets, with some Mediterranean influences. The Hadza’s poop, however, was like stepping into a lost continent of microbe biodiversity. ”The Hadza gut mibrobiome has an entirely unique combination of bacteria from any western population, or rural African population, that’s been sampled,” said co-author Alyssa Crittenden, a nutritional anthropologist from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Many of the bacteria are species that the researchers had never seen before. And even familiar microbes were present in unusual levels in the Hadza belly. “The Hadza not only lack the ‘healthy bacteria,’ and they don’t suffer from the diseases we suffer from, but they also have high levels of bacteria that are associated with disease,” Crittenden said.

Post external references

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    http://www.wired.com/2014/04/hadza-hunter-gatherer-gut-microbiome/
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