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  3. Microbiome helps us by digesting our food, training our immune systems and cr

Microbiome helps us by digesting our food, training our immune systems and cr

游客2025-01-20  8
问题    Microbiome helps us by digesting our food, training our immune systems and crowding out other harmful microbes that could cause disease. In return, everything from the food we eat to the medicines we take can shape our microbial communities — with important implications for our health. Studies have found that changes in our microbiome accompany medical problems from obesity to diabetes to colon cancer.
   As these correlations have unfurled, so has the hope that we might fix these ailments by shunting our bugs toward healthier states. The gigantic probiotics industry certainly wants you to think that, although there is little evidence that swallowing a few billion yogurt-borne bacteria has more than a small impact on the trillions in our guts. The booming genre of microbiome diet books — self-help manuals for the bacterial self — peddles a similar line, even though our knowledge of microbe-manipulating menus is still in its infancy.
   This quest for a healthy microbiome has led some people to take measures that are far more extreme than simply spooning up yogurt. In September, the archaeology writer Jeff Leach used a turkey baster to infuse his guts with the feces of a Hadza tribesman from Tanzania. Doctors have carried out hundreds of fecal transplants, particularly to treat people with unshakable infections of the diarrhea-causing bacterium Clostridium difficile. The procedure has been spectacularly successful, far more than conventional antibiotics.
   Mr. Leach experimented on himself because he views the Western microbiome as " a hot microbial mess". He believed the Hadza, with their traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle, carry diverse microbial communities that are presumably closer to a healthier and disappearing ideal. Hence the stunt with the turkey baster. This reasoning invokes an increasingly common trope: that there is a "normal" or "healthy" microbiome that one should aim for. There is not.
   "Healthy" microbes can easily turn rogue. Those in our guts are undoubtedly helpful, but if they cross the lining of the intestine and enter our bloodstream, they can trigger a debilitating immune response.
   Conversely, "unhealthy" configurations of microbes can be normal, even necessary. Researchers found that microbiomes go through a huge upheaval by the third trimester of pregnancy. They end up looking like the microbiomes of people with metabolic syndrome — a disorder that involves obesity, high blood sugar and a higher risk of diabetes and heart disease. These communities might indicate someone on the verge of chronic disease — or merely motherhood. Packing fat and building up blood sugar makes sense when you are nourishing a growing fetus.
   The microbiome is a teeming collection of thousands of species, all constantly competing with one another, evolving, changing. We must embrace its complexity if we hope to benefit from it. [br] What is the author’s attitude toward the experiment of the archaeology writer?
选项 A、Approving.
B、Disapproving.
C、Indifferent.
D、Neutral.
答案 B
解析
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