Quite balanced report ...but really shows we don't know very much at the moment to manage the intestinal ecology. Maybe in 20-30 years we may know enough to try some treatments.
I liked the following
He is interested in how human beings throughout all of time have shared their bodies with bacteria, a symbiosis that entails that most of the bacteria in the body probably have some function or other. But most of the research, up until very recently, has been focused on finding the evil individual bacteria, naming them – and killing them.
“But there are very few that are only troublemakers,” Midtvedt says.
And
His most important lesson, which is now starting to acquire broad penetration, is that the bacteria in the intestinal system must be viewed as an ecosystem. Everything is connected with everything else, and this diversity must be there in order for us to stay healthy. You can’t just remove some “evil” bacteria, as one does with antibiotics, and believe that this is purely beneficial. Neither can you gobble up “nice” bacteria in the form of so-called probiotics, for example some types of yoghurt, and believe that this is purely beneficial as well.
“It’s difficult to be an ecologist – you become a tiny part of so much and have to take into account the whole shebang,” Midtvedt says.
