Disclaimer. This article is for information and knowledge purposes only. It is imperative that you get clearance and are monitored if you plan to undertake any form of diet therapy especially if you have Cancer and/or Chronic Illness.

Improving the microbiome

The following information is intended to give an overview of the importance of a healthy microbiome in Cancer Prevention, Treatment and Therapy Optimization. More and more studies reveal the importance of a healthy gut microbiome and the success of cancer therapy.

Standard of care therapies such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy generally carry high rates of resistance and can eventually lose their efficacy against killing the cancer. Given these high rates of resistance, therapies and interventions that improve the microbiome are now considered very important when a person is preparing for cancer therapies.

First, what is a Microbiome?

Our microbiome is a living community that populates our gut and also other areas such as the skin. Most people know that the microbiome’s job is to protect the gut from nasty invaders. However, ongoing research is continually finding that the microbiome’s health determines the health of the human. The microbiome are like tiny magicians. They can take a simple compound such as carbon and turn it into several chemicals that the body uses to make other things, such as hormones.

There is ‘crosstalk’ between the microbiome and the immune system. The microbiome has been shown to give direction to the immune system to attack any bacteria that may pose a risk to a person through infection. The microbiome have also been shown to protect the ‘host’ through many levels of immunity.7

The health of the microbiome can also control many other aspects of health.

It can regulate body weight by deciding how much energy your body extracts from the food you eat.
A balanced and healthy microbiome population can help ward off cold and flu and more serious diseases such as autoimmune diseases and allergies.

Our guts remain a critical defence system against disease, but our dietary and lifestyle changes have weakened the modern human gut.

Why is Gut Health Deteriorating?

Evolution and Gut Changes (In a Nutshell).

It is essential to understand why gut health today has declined exponentially. Human evolutionary changes cannot keep up with the fast-paced changes in food production.

In our efforts to preserve foods for longer storage and kill harmful organisms present in foods, we have indiscriminately killed almost all the microorganisms present. If we imagine the gut as being like a landscape, there should be an ecosystem where everything is in balance and works together seamlessly. Once there is an overabundance of one species, it can then create an imbalance in the whole ecosystem. Food production and its effects on the microbiome are like clearing the landscape and leaving it bare and vulnerable to damage.

Antibiotics and the Gut

Antibiotics save lives. We know this! However, the ubiquitous nature of antibiotics has further eroded the gut health of human beings. Because antibiotics attack living bacteria, the bacteria that are resistant to those antibiotics are then allowed to flourish, creating a dangerous imbalance. We see this often in the hospital setting with C.diff infections. C. diff is usually contained within the microbiome; however, when the patient undergoes antibiotic therapy, the microbiome becomes imbalanced, allowing the C.diff to proliferate and cause illness in the patient.

You do not need to be taking a course of antibiotics to damage the microbiome. A person can be exposed to low-dose antibiotics by eating the meat from animals that have been fed antibiotics. Therefore, consuming these foods can also contribute to microbiome disturbance.

It is very common for cancer patients to receive antibiotics therapy sometime during their cancer treatment, since their immune systems have been jeopardized, making them more likely to develop various infections. Studies are now indicating that treatment with antibiotics up to one month before starting immunotherapy may negatively affect the efficacy of the immunotherapy itself.5

What are some signs that your gut may not be healthy?

The following are general symptoms that can indicate that your gut is not functioning optimally.

1. Bloating, burping and bad breath
2. Sugar Cravings
3. Constipation, diarrhoea and gas
4. Food intolerances or sensitivities
5. Unstable moods and mental wellbeing
6. Poor Immune Health
7. Skin problems
8. Poor sleep & low energy

Things that can harm and kill the microbiome

Not only do we have to think about the foods we eat, but we must also think about what things could be harming the precious microbiota that already exists in our digestive tract. There are a few culprits here, so it is a good idea to avoid these if you are preparing for cancer treatment.

1. Glyphosate – Weed Killer. Studies have shown that even low levels of glyphosate will affect the microbiome.
2. Artificial sweetener, especially Sucralose – This artificial sweetener goes under several different brand names. This product also affects the bacteria in your intestines.
3. Triclosan – an antibacterial agent found in toothpaste and hand soap. Studies are supporting that this may be killing your good bacteria as well as leading to a microbiome that may reduce our ability to fight cancer p 108
4. Emulsifiers – This is a ‘detergent’ added to most processed food to improve its texture and extend its shelf life. Research results have concluded that numerous commonly used emulsifiers can alter the gut microbiota. This deranged microbiota was then shown to increase intestinal inflammation.t9

Testing for Gut Health

Many tests are available that look at the details of the patient’s microbiome. These tests can be highly beneficial as the patient is not just guessing and supplementing blindly. If the patient has scheduled immunotherapy or cancer likely to be treated with immunotherapy, this test is crucial as it will test for the main bacteria that are key in optimising Immunotherapy outcomes. One such test is the NutriPATH Complete Microbiome Test.

How the Status of the Microbiome could Increase or Decrease Cancer Therapy Effectiveness

The gut microbiota has been implicated in cancer and shown to enhance and improve the effectiveness of cancer treatments. Altered gut microbiota is associated with resistance to chemotherapy drugs or immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), whereas supplementation of distinct bacterial species restores responses to the anticancer drugs.
Dr Jason Williams is a Board Certified Radiologist and the author of the amazing book – The Immunotherapy Revolution. Jason quotes the following

“When I hear of patients who have failed traditional immunotherapy, one of my first questions I ask myself is, did they have the right bacterial flora in their intestinal system? Were they eating a high-fiber diet and taking the appropriate pre and probiotics that they needed for their gut to enhance their immune system? Were they even aware of the connection between gut flora and the immune system? Chances are, they weren’t”

Gut Microbiome and Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy is the concept of using the immune system to treat cancer. Think about immunotherapy as the ‘cat that finds the rat’. It’s a priming of the immune system to target cancer. Much research over the years has proven that cancer has clever ways of hiding from the immune system.

One of the most exciting aspects of looking after and building the gut microbiome has to be immunotherapy. There is irrefutable evidence that the status of your microbiome DOES affect the outcome of the Immunotherapy 6.

Research has shown that getting the microbiome into its best shape one month before immunotherapy is ideal if the patient aims for the best possible outcome.

Gut Microbiome and Chemotherapy

Although not traditionally considered immunotherapy, effective treatment with conventional chemotherapy also depends on intact immune responses. Considering this notion, could the gut microbiota’s health determine chemotherapy’s effectiveness?

Studies in regards to the microbiome and chemotherapy also demonstrate that a healthy microbiome can assist treatment effectiveness.’ One study done on the microbiota and the chemotherapy drug cyclophosphamide showed that adding health microbiome to mice facilitated a healthy immune response that was able to increase the Th17 response (th17 cells help cancer-killing cells to enter cancer cells)8.

Gut Microbiome and its influence on the level of toxicity following treatment

Immunotherapy is designed to use the immune system as a weapon against cancer. Although immunotherapy is seen as the therapy that may have the least toxic side effects, cancer-killing therapy can potentially cause toxicity through cellular die-off. ‘There is mounting data from human cohorts suggesting that the gut microbiota is a dominant force in mediating both response and toxicity to these therapeutic strategies.6

Now we know how important the gut microbiome is, we can look at ways of implementing a plan that could help increase the chances of success with cancer treatment.

Please stay tuned for more research posts, where we will share simple and practical ideas that anybody can start easily.

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