Our gut and how it works
The intestinal microflora is composed of more than 500 different bacterial species that live in a delicate balance among themselves and with the human body. The colon is the region of our gut where there is the highest concentration of bacteria, where it is estimated that there are between 10 and 100 trillion healthy bacteria.
The intestinal microflora is very important for our health because it is able to:
- fight against pathogenic bacteria through a mechanism of competition and the production of antibacterial substances (bacteriocine, H²O², lactic acid, etc,);
- produce short chain fatty acids, the most important nourishment for enteric cells;
- produce vitamins (K, B1, B6,B12, folic acid, pantotenic acid, etc,) which play an important role in different metabolic reactions;
- modulate the maturation of the host’s innate and adoptive immune responses (80% of the immune system is localised in the gut).
Many different factors can influence the balance of intestinal microflora:
- way of living