Better Heart Health Through the Gut?

You don’t need to have taken an anatomy class to know that your gut is separate from your heart. But did you know that the bacteria in your gut microbiome can offer amazing protection against the risk of developing heart disease, stroke, and high blood pressure?

It’s understandable if you didn’t. With the amount of information and misinformation constantly flooding our feeds, it’s easy to feel a bit overwhelmed.

From grocery store aisles and pharmacies to your TikTok and Instagram feeds, gut health supplements are everywhere. But all they seem to promise is better regularity. If the gut microbiome affects heart health, how does that work, and why isn’t anyone talking about it?

The bacteria and microorganisms living alongside us in our gut, collectively called “the gut microbiome,” fill multiple roles. We have both good and bad bacteria.

A few vital roles the good bacteria fill include:

• Maintaining a barrier between the cells that absorb nutrients and the rest of the gut.
• Digesting prebiotics and using that “fuel” to release beneficial byproducts, also known as postbiotics. These work to decrease inflammation and risk of heart disease and associated risk factors, like diabetes. Specific beneficial postbiotics include short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs).
• “Crowding out” bad bacteria to keep a healthy balance of different types of bacteria in the gut and minimize the number (and bad effects) of bad bacteria.

What happens when bad bacteria have too much influence in the gut? That barrier keeping harmful chemicals from being absorbed becomes “leaky,” leading to irritation, or inflammation that spreads throughout the body. Heart disease, at its core, is driven by inflammation.

Just like good bacteria release beneficial byproducts, bad bacteria produce harmful byproducts that drive inflammation, accelerate blockages in the arteries of the heart and increase the risk of a heart attack, and create a vicious cycle of a leakier and leakier gut barrier that then absorbs more and more harmful chemicals. 

What we eat, like red meat, pushes the needle towards harmful chemicals, like trimethyl amine N-oxide (TMAO), known to promote blockages in heart arteries and increase risk of having a heart attack.

Diets heavier in fast food, red meat, and other less healthy options decrease the diversity of bacteria in the gut and tend to promote overgrowth of bad bacteria. This is a two-for-one hit, taking away the healthy contributions of good bacteria and magnifying the harmful contributions of bad bacteria. 

To add insult to injury, the types of bacteria found in unhealthy gut microbiomes are bad at absorbing heart-related medications your doctor may prescribe for you, possibly taking away the benefits of medications meant to improve health. That’s hard-earned money out of your pocket for a medication that can’t do its job properly. 

So, what do we do? The good news is an unhealthy gut microbiome doesn’t have to be permanent, and the balance towards a healthy gut microbiome can be restored.

Here’s how:

• Prebiotics feed good bacteria, allowing them to thrive and outcompete bad bacteria in the gut.
• The right kinds of probiotics boost production of postbiotics, those beneficial chemicals that improve gut health and heart health. They can even lower bad cholesterol, or LDL, the number one driving force behind blockages in heart arteries. 
• Healthier living, through diet and exercise, reinforces the growth and beneficial effects of good bacteria.

Biotics3TM is designed to give your body the prebiotics, probiotics, and postbiotics known to combat heart disease. Keep following along as we share the science, give practical health tips, and dissect the latest research, so you don’t have to.

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