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Medical Matters

Factual: Health & Wellbeing

A series of programmes looking at health issues

Medical Matters: Gut Reaction

01/01/2016

Gut Reaction

BBC Radio Scotland - Medical Matters, Gut Reaction

Edi Stark finds out how microbes in the gut are igniting a medical revolution.

Edi Stark puts gut bacteria under the microscope and asks if diet could be contributing to conditions as diverse as heart disease, cancer, asthma, arthritis, autism and depression.

Each one of us each carries about 3lbs of microbes in and on our bodies - that's trillions of tiny organisms that between them contain 100 times as many genes as our own genomes do.

By far the most important place these microbes make their home is deep within our guts. And in the last ten years, a technological revolution means scientists are now beginning to discover just how crucial these microscopic creatures living within us are to our overall health.

What they're learning has been called one of the biggest developments in medical research in the 21st century. And it could provide opportunities for some startling new treatments.

In this special edition of Medical Matters, Edi Stark puts gut bacteria under the microscope and asks if our bacteria and the food we feed them might be contributing to conditions as diverse as heart disease, asthma, arthritis, autism, depression, multiple sclerosis and diabetes.

From the Glasgow doctor pioneering fecal transplants in patients with otherwise untreatable bowel complaints, to the woman with multiple sclerosis convinced that changing her diet has improved her condition, we hear from the doctors and patients harnessing the power of their own microbes for good.

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