Health Updates
Common medications could change your gut for years?
Gut microbiome changes may not be so transient?
This is a fascinating area of research, but it’s worth flagging that most drug-microbiome-nutrient triads are backed largely by correlational human data, and in some cases the findings are genuinely contested.
What Alvina find most interesting is the overlap. Metformin and proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), for example, sit in both categories, they’re linked to nutrient depletion and microbiome disruption. That raises a real question: Is vitamin B12 deficiency on these drugs a direct absorption/pharmacokinetic effect? A downstream consequence of microbiome shifts affecting B12-producing (or competing) flora? Or some combination of both, and if so, in what proportion?
“In addition to depleting vitamin B12, metformin also inhibits bile acid reabsorption, this leaves more bile acids in the colon, which decreases water and sodium absorption and increases colonic motility. Voila! There’s the well-known side effect of metformin: diarrhoea. Perhaps this may be one way the microbiome gets disrupted.”