What is dysbiosis?
Healthcare providers use the term “dysbiosis” to refer to an unbalanced or unhealthy gut microbiome.
Dysbiosis means:
- A loss or deficit of beneficial bacteria.
- Overgrowth of potentially pathogenic (bad) bacteria.
- Loss of overall bacterial diversity.
Dysbiosis may start with one of these three factors, but the others tend to soon follow. A loss of beneficial bacteria leaves your gut vulnerable to more disease-causing or invasive types. These types can overrun the other microorganisms living there, diminishing the overall diversity in your microbiome.
What environmental factors affect your gut microbiome?
Just like a garden, your gut microbiome is affected by the nutrients and pollutants, pests and weeds it’s exposed to. The diversity of plants and their different seasons or life cycles also affect it. In your gut, this means your diet, chemical exposures, disease-causing organisms and bowel movement regularity.
Diet
The variety of microorganisms in your gut microbiome requires a variety of plant fibers to thrive. Different organisms prefer different whole foods. In turn, they produce short-chain fatty acids and other byproducts that nourish your gut and lower the pH inside, which favors the more beneficial microbes.
On the other hand, a diet high in sugar and saturated fats tends to favor the less helpful types of microorganisms. Processed foods not only lack fiber and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) but also tend to come with many additives and preservatives, which can be harmful to your microbiome.
Chemicals
Chemicals that may poison your microbiome include environmental toxins like alcohol, tobacco smoke and pollutants. Additionally, pesticides like antibiotics can wipe out the good bacteria along with the bad. Other medications, like acid blockers, can affect your microbiome by changing the pH inside.
Your gut microbiome can usually recover from temporary chemical exposure, like a brief prescription for a medication you need to get well. But chronic exposure can affect its composition. If you take certain medications or use substances like alcohol frequently, it may prevent certain microbes from thriving.
Diversity
In a healthy gut microbiome, different types of microorganisms support each other. Consider how different plants in a garden cross-pollinate or nourish the soil for each other. For example, some types feed other types by breaking down compounds, or their byproducts change the acidity of the “soil.”
On the other hand, a microbiome that doesn’t support a healthy variety of microorganisms is more vulnerable to being overrun by the invasive types. Without healthy competition, these “weeds” and “pests” take over the habitat and deplete the resources that the other types need to survive.
Motility
Your motility is the regular movement of your bowels. This is how your “crop” of microorganisms turns over. After traveling through your colon, where they help break down undigested compounds into nutrients you can absorb, many come out with your poop. How long this takes affects your microbiome.
The movement of food and waste through your GI tract helps to distribute different microbes into different places along the way. If it’s too fast, they don’t have time to settle or to do their jobs before clearing out. But if it’s too slow, they can overeat and overgrow, spreading beyond their territory.
What health conditions and disorders relate to my gut microbiome?
Conditions directly related to gut dysbiosis include:
- Infections. Invasive pathogens (disease-causing organisms) can cause temporary or chronic infections in your gut. They can cause diarrhea, inflammation (colitis) and toxic damage to your gut lining. Some types even directly invade your gut barrier, threatening to escape into your bloodstream and go systemic. Dysbiosis weakens your gut’s defenses against these pathogens.
- SIBO. Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth is dysbiosis in your small intestine. It means certain types of bacteria there are overgrown, using too many resources and producing too many byproducts. In some cases, bacteria from your large intestine have migrated and settled in your small intestine, where they don’t really belong. This can be a result of slow gut motility.
- Inflammatory bowel disease. IBD is a collection of autoimmune conditions in your gut that includes ulcerative colitis, microscopic colitis and Crohn’s disease. Gut dysbiosis is one of the criteria for diagnosing IBD. Researchers still aren’t sure which comes first, but they know the two conditions are related and that each contributes to the other, making it worse.
- Atherosclerosis. Certain less-desirable gut bacteria contribute to your cardiovascular risk by producing a byproduct called trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO). This byproduct builds up in your arteries, contributing to atherosclerosis (hardening of your arteries). It’s one of the substances that cardiac blood tests check for when determining your risk of coronary artery disease (CAD).
Other conditions that may be indirectly related to gut dysbiosis include:
- Allergies.
- Anxiety.
- Asthma.
- Autism.
- Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).
- Colon cancer.
- Diabetes.
- Depression.
- Fatty liver disease.
- Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
- Liver cancer.
- Multiple sclerosis (MS).
- Neurodegenerative diseases.
- Obesity.
- Pancreatic cancer.
- Rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
What are common signs or symptoms of a problem with my gut microbiome?
Typical symptoms of gut dysbiosis include:
- Gas and gas pain.
- Bloated stomach.
- Poor digestion.
- Lower abdominal pain.
- Diarrhea.
- Constipation.
Can I take a test to check the health of my gut microbiome?
Many commercial labs offer gut microbiome testing kits to consumers. You can send a poop sample to a lab, and they’ll send you back a report telling you a little bit about the composition of your gut microbiome. Clinical healthcare providers generally don’t use or recommend these tests, though.
The reason is that we still don’t know enough about the different types of gut microbiota or how they affect our health to make a report like this useful. There’s a lot of exciting research in progress, but it has some ways to go before a gut microbiome test can give you practical, personalized healthcare advice.
How do healthcare providers test for gut dysbiosis?
Healthcare providers don’t check for dysbiosis, per se, but they can check for specific conditions, like infections and bacterial overgrowth. They may use blood tests, stool tests or breath tests. A breath test can measure different gases in your breath that are the byproducts of certain bacteria in your gut.
