Gut Microbes Could Play a Role in Heart Disease Too

[Andy]

Research has shown that having the right gut microbes can reduce the risk of heart disease – if you're a mouse. Now, our latest study, published in the European Heart Journal, shows that this might be true for humans, too.

Most people know that the risk factors for heart disease are high blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking. But these factors are not very good at predicting heart disease in younger people, in women and in some ethnic groups.

A poor gut microbiome could be the missing risk factor we've been looking for.

https://www.sciencealert.com/gut-mi...e-in-heart-disease-risk-too-microbiome-health

 

[arewenearlythereyet]

Interesting, although unfortunately we don’t really have a hard and fast fact based solution to the best way to improve gut flora or indeed a standard for what good gut flora looks like (that’s robust). The article also kind of glosses over the solution of which we have precious little information at present. Personally I think probiotics and faecal transplant seem like rather strange places to focus on when most of the evidence on this is so tenuous. Perhaps this is more to do with selling stuff rather than simple dietary advice which in the main is non specific and difficult to connect to research funding?

Eat a more diverse diet with fibre (if you can tolerate it) seems the only thing we can do until we have some better evidence as to what good looks like and more importantly a better way of measuring it.