Baby You Can Drive My Gut

[Guide]

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"SCFA (short-chain fatty acids) molecules are a subset of fatty acids that are churned out by some types of gut microbes during the fermentation of fiber. They're associated with maintaining gut health and protecting against disease....And experiments recently showed that certain types of bacteria extracted from baby feces could promote the production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) in mice, and in a medium simulating the human gut...."Short-chain fatty acids are a key component of good gut health," lead study author Hariom Yadav, an assistant professor of molecular medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine, said in a statement....Fecal microbiota transplants (FMT), or "poop transplants," can treat a type of gut disorder with an infusion of diverse bacteria from a healthy digestive system, distilled from a donor's poop. This helps to correct imbalances of microbial diversity when the gut microbiome is dominated by the bacteria Clostridium difficile (C. diff), which can lead to serious gut disorders."

"Previous studies have investigated the use of probiotics — those healthy gut bacteria — by testing their impact in guts already affected by disease, the researchers wrote in the study. For the new investigation, they wanted to see how a probiotic would impact SCFA production in a healthy gut. They chose to work with baby poop because infants' gut microbiomes are typically free from age-related diseases "such as diabetes and cancer," and because of the sheer abundance of infant feces at their disposal. ("Their poop is readily available," Yadav said.)"

Will Baby Poop Bacteria Become the New Probiotic?
By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer, Live Science

"While the new study examined what happened to mice after they received the mixture — there hasn’t been a study on humans yet — Yadav says that 'we are also planning to put these probiotics in yogurt, kombucha, and several other mediums for human use.' ”

Why Scientists Think Baby Poop Is a Medical Gold Mine
Probiotics are the future, baby.
By Sarah Sloat, Inverse
 

* Low-temperature electron micrograph of a cluster of E. coli bacteria, magnified 10,000 times. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons