Lately, there has been a lot of research looking at the link between the brain and the gut. We wanted to know: Is there a similar link between the heart and the gut? Doctors agree there most certainly is, and mostly it is mediated by the health and balance of the gut microbiome.
A popular adage has it that “you are what you eat.” And every year new research continues to suggest that this idea may, in fact, be correct.
Recently, scientists have been focusing on a potential link between the health of the gut and that of the heart.
Doctors already recommend eating heart-healthy foods, and medical professionals agree that much of the correlation between heart and gut health has to do with the gut microbiome, including its composition, and a toxic byproduct it creates when metabolizing certain foods.
Medical News Today spoke with five experts to get to the bottom of how much gut health truly impacts cardiovascular health.
All the experts we spoke to agreed that the gut microbiome can have a profound impact on heart health.
“The gut microbiome is a complex community of trillions of microorganisms, including bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protozoa, that reside in the human digestive tract, primarily in the large intestine (colon),” Dr. Nathaniel E. Lebowitz, a cardiologist with Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey explained to MNT.
“These microorganisms can be healthy or unhealthy depending on what we feed them. If they are unhealthy, all of our body’s systems can go haywire. Just like we depend on the microbiome for our health, it depends on us for its health,” he detailed.
“Keeping the microbiome healthy is increasingly found to be critically important for all of our organs — including the heart and arteries,” Dr. Lebowitz continued. “We know that
In…
Read the full article here