Andrea Azcarate-Peril, PhD, associate professor of medicine, discusses her research into the bacterial communities that live inside our guts and offers tips on how you can maintain a healthy microbiome.
Bacteria have thousands of genes and functions that we, the human host, do not have. For instance, bacteria can help us digest fiber, provide support to our immune systems, and absorb important nutrients. But reaping the benefits of “good bacteria” is easier said than done.
At the moment, there are as many types of probiotics on the shelves as there are people on the planet. Having so many options at our disposal makes it difficult for the average consumer to know which ones are “the best” for our own bodies or ailments.
Andrea Azcarate-Peril, PhD is trying to understand how to better prescribe probiotics based on our individual microbiomes – or the collection of genomes from all microbes that naturally live inside of us.
“Probiotics have been around for a very, very long time,” said Azcarate-Peril, who is an associate professor of medicine and nutrition in the School of Medicine at UNC. ”We’ve studied them for decades. The problem is that some people will take probiotics, and they will do these miraculous things for them. But that doesn’t work for everyone.”