On Sunday, 60 Minutes featured our own Jeff Gordon, who discussed the gut microbiome and its connection to nutritional health, including the use of probiotics. The possibility of improving health by manipulating the microbiome could provide many benefits to individuals suffering from a host of health conditions. Last year, Gordon’s team reported that a special supplemental mixture of nutrients containing chickpeas, soy, bananas and peanuts can repair the damaged microbiome of malnourished infants.
We’re coming to understand that much more clearly and this capacity to process–the food that we consume is linked to our health as well as our disease states, remarked Gordon.
His lab continues its research in the area the role of the gut microbiota in defining nutritional status; developing gut microbial community-targeted therapeutics to treat undernutrition in infants and children living in low-income countries, and obesity in Westernized countries.
To see the segment on that aired on 60 Minutes click here.