doTERRA has released many new products and information on our Microbiome. What is it? Why is it important? and most importantly, How can we support it? Let's dive right in...
What Is the Microbiome and What Is Its Function?
Your microbiome functions like an invisible organ. It’s a vast and diverse ecosystem of microbes that are essential to wellness. Key to microbiome function is proper microbial diversity and balance, with a high ratio of good bacteria to bad. The body’s natural aging process can disrupt your microbiome, along with an unbalanced diet, lack of exercise, poor sleep schedule, and stressful lifestyle. Augmenting a wellness lifestyle with supplementation can help restore microbiome health.
Your Microbiome Is More than Just Your Gut
Your microbiome exists throughout your body, including your skin, mouth, eyes, ears, nose, lungs, kidneys, urinary tract, reproductive system—basically anywhere that has contact with the outside world! Each microbial community communicates with and helps support your cells and vital organs, which is foundational for system health.
Diversity Matters
Your microbiome is like a garden, where the bacteria, viruses, and fungi are the different plants and insects. Just like a healthy garden needs a good balance of plants and insects to thrive, your body needs a diverse and balanced microbiome to stay healthy. And just like how a garden can grow out of balance if there’s just one type of plant or too many insects, your microbiome can also become unbalanced. So it’s important to take care of your microbiome by eating a diverse and healthy diet, getting enough sleep, and managing stress.
Healthy microbiomes have more good microbes—sometimes called flora—than bad, but there’s more to it than just numbers. Diverse microbiomes are more resilient at handling stressors and adapting quickly to changing circumstances. You need various microbes to metabolize food and supplements, produce important signaling messages, and assist the immune system, among other crucial functions.
What Does the Microbiome Do for Your Body?
If you take care of your microbiome, it’ll take care of you. Your microbiome’s job is to weed out the good bacteria from the bad. In today’s world, words like bacteria and virus have negative connotations, but not all of them are bad! In fact, many are essential to your health. When you support a healthy microbiome, your body becomes much better at determining which ones are helpful.
Different Microbiomes in Your Body
The gut microbiome helps you digest food and absorb nutrients. It also helps protect your body from harmful invaders, like how a fence around a garden keeps out unwanted pests.
The brain is a central processing unit, meaning everything you encounter is processed by it, organized into patterns, and then distributed as signals to the rest of your body.
Your skin is a physical barrier that protects you against foreign pathogens. Like the microbiota in your gut, these essential microorganisms protect and educate your immune system.
Your nose, sinuses, and lungs work alongside your immune system, and your mouth is an ideal environment for microorganism growth.
Together, the various microbiomes in and on your body work to keep your immune system strong and your metabolism healthy by enhancing the good microbes and kicking out the bad.
So now what? You've learned what the Microbiome is and how it functions in the body. How can we support this important system? Look out for part 2 next week!
Check out these videos for more information!