I have been gratified that so many of our IFPA Certified Fitness, Health, Nutrition, and Sports Professionals have been asking about the human microbiome.

This FitBit is meant to answer some of the most common questions we have been receiving.

In short, the microbiome is a collection of microbes that live in and on our bodies. This collection includes bacteria, fungi, viruses, and their genes that live naturally within and on our bodies.

We all know from our biology and chemistry classes in school that microbes are all so small, that we all need microscopes to see them, and looking at how strange, and sometimes ugly they look, it could feel "creepy" to know we have trillions of these creepy crawlies living with our bodies. In fact, as of this writing, it is estimated that we have 600 trillion of these critters living with each of us!

And please don't ask me who took the time to count them. If you are good at math, you probably already figured that 600 trillion seconds is 19.03 million years! That's a lot of counting!

The microbiome was defined by Dr. Whipps and his colleagues in 1988, while working on the ecology of rhizosphere microorganisms, as a microbial community of multi-species assemblages, in which the microorganisms interact with each other in a contiguous environment.

One question that often arises is whether the microbiome is good or bad.

The answer is both and neither. The microbiome contains microbes that are healthy and some that are not.

In fact, most are symbiotic, where both the microbe and our human bodies live together to benefit each other. Some, however, can be pathogenic, which can cause disease if they were to grow into a sizable colony that could overwhelm our immune system.

The trick is to feed the healthy microbes and starve...or at least limit the foods that nourish the pathogenic microbes. It should be no surprise to anyone who took the IFPA Sports Nutrition Certification Course that eating healthily not only keeps the doctor away, but keeps the pathogenic microbes at bay as well.

The microbes may be small, but the impact they make on human health and wellness is huge!

The microbiome affects not only physical health but mental and emotional health as well. It is in all our best interests to find ways to keep our microbiomes healthy...if it is in our interests to remain healthy ourselves.

As you may already know, the best way to keep our microbiome healthy is to eat many of the same foods that nutrition scientists have told us to eat to keep our bodies healthy. The microbiome is healthiest when we eat plenty of fresh, clean, pesticide-free, whole foods like:

• legumes, beans, nuts,
• seafoods high in omega 3 fatty acids (i.e.: cold water/wild caught fish),
• high-fiber foods,
• fermented food (i.e.: sauerkraut, yogurt, kimchi, kefir, kombucha, miso, tempeh),
• foods high in polyphenols (i.e.: berries, grapes, red wine, coffee, tea, olives, olive oil, black beans, dark chocolate, nuts, apples, and turmeric),
• foods high in vitamin D (i.e.: salmon, trout, sardines, eggs, mushrooms (portabella, white, cremini, maitake, and D-fortified milk)),
• and whole grains.

The worst things to eat are the foods known to destroy the microbes of your microbiome, namely:

• processed foods,
• refined sugars,
• commercially factory-farmed and grown meats (corn-fed/drug/antibiotic injected meats and poultry),
• excessive alcoholic drink ingestion,
• artificial sweeteners,
• processed/refined grains,
• high intake of saturated fats,
• fried foods,
• pesticides/herbicides in foods.

If you are routinely sick, perhaps it is your microbiome that is sick and has been damaged through poor nutrition and lifestyle habits.

If you even suspect this is a possible cause, why not try a "Microbiome Recovery Program?" The National Institute of Health (NIH) has published a "Microbiome Restoration Diet" that has been shown to dramatically improve digestive, physical, mental, and emotional health.

The NIH recommends you to consume probiotic foods such as:

• fermented milk kefir,
• sauerkraut,
• tempeh,
• miso,

And increase your intake of prebiotic foods like fruits and vegetables, specifically:

• bananas,
• fennel,
• asparagus,
• cold potatoes,
• Jerusalem artichokes,
• garlic,
• pak choi,
• leeks,
• onions,
• bone broth/bone stock.

This should provide you with a good start in improving the health of your microbiome.

*For information on avoiding or negating pesticides in your foods, see last month's FitBit.

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