Why we need gut bacteria #loveyourgut

Most of us were brought up to see bacteria as a bad thing – the stuff that grows on food as it goes off and the germs that makes us ill – but bacteria is actually vital to our very existence. In fact, there are ten times more bacteria cells in your body than there are human cells. Many of these do a vital job in keeping us healthy, from fighting disease to helping us to digest our food, and as a recent Horizon programme showed, they also play an important role in preventing allergies.

The ‘Modern Life and Me’ programme (available on the BBC iPlayer until September 17^th) followed two families with serious allergies. Allergies have risen tenfold in the last 30 years with as many as one in three of us suffering in some way. 20,000 people are hospitalised by allergies each year, and three people a day die from an allergic reaction. But what has this got to do with bacteria, or indeed colonics?

Allergies and bacteria

Bacteria are thought to play a crucial role in educating the immune system to know how to react appropriately to attack. Without this, you get inappropriate reactions, which show up as allergies. The place most of these bacteria live, is the gut, and the diversity of these bacteria is the key to allergy free health.

In an African tribe who live off the land in the Rift Valley, and so have a richly diverse gut bacteria, just 1 in 1500 people have an allergy. In the UK, where our gut bacteria are far less diverse, that figure is 1 in 3. Incredibly, one of the children in the programme, who had a wide range of allergies, was found to have no Bifidobacterium at all, compared to over 40million in the average gut.

Colonics and pro-biotics

It is thought that cleaning out your gut with a colonic could significantly improve the internal environment, helping gut bacteria to thrive. Colonics remove fecal waste and mucus, leaving a clean, healthy gut that provides a level playing field for good bacteria to compete. Combine your colonic with pro-biotics, and feed these new bacteria with pre-biotic foods in a healthy diet, and you could even tip the balance in their favour.

Our relationship with bacteria is a new and emerging science, and ARCH is actively investing in clinical research to back up the positive health benefits that our therapists see every day in our clients. We’re also playing our part in helping allergy sufferers, and will be exhibiting at the Allergy and Free From event in Liverpool at the end of October.

Get your free ticket to the Allergy and Free From show here. Join the mailing list on the website for special offers and all the news running up to the show. Follow the conversation on twitter using #freefromer

Forget what you’ve been taught about the mould in your fruit bowl; bacteria are increasingly being seen as a vital part of life and we need to do all we can to help them to thrive in our bodies. So book your colonic today and give your gut bacteria a break.