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BY KATHERINE HOBSONPremium Health News Service

Don’t look now, but your gut is teeming with as many as 100 trillion microbes.

Research continues, but we already know, suspect or theorize they have the ability to:

1. Influence disease in your gut: Microbes are suspected to play a role in both promoting and suppressing inf lammatory bowel disease, including Crohn’s disease and ulcer-ative colitis.

2. Give you the stomach-flu blues: It’s possible that gut bacteria could be talking to your vagal nervous system, which sends signals from the gut to the brain. If microbes “speak” to any of the sensory nerve cells that lie within the gut walls, it might influence your emo-

tions when you’re suffering from gastroenteritis.

3. Influence autoimmune disease, allergies: Gut bacteria are also thought to influence the immune system. Too much of one kind of immune response has been associated with au

toimmune diseases, while an overactive response led by another kind of immune cell can result in allergies.

4. Play a role in obesity: The particular mixture of microbes in your gut may be influencing your tendency to gain weight.

5. Cut the risk of painful kidney stones: One microbe, Oxalobacter for-migenes, can break down calcium oxalate, the sub-stance that makes up most kidney stones.

6. Affect cancer risk: Microbes living in the gut may play a role in cancer, for good and for bad. H. pylori, for example, is linked to stomach cancer but may have a protective role, too, fighting gastroesophageal reflux disease.

7. Help out someone else: The healthy balance of gut bacteria can be restored by a fecal transplant.

A healthy person “donates” his or her normally functioning gut bacteria via filtered stool, which is inserted into the infected person by enema or using a tube snaking down the nose and into the gut.

Gut germs: Friend or foe?

The bacteria that lives in your gut can be both beneficial and harmful.

A study found that cocoa reduced indicators of heart disease.

Polyphenols are anti-oxidant chemicals found in cocoa, the chokeberry fruit, green tea and blueberries.

Antioxidants have been researched for their health benefits — namely, the ways they might fight inflamma-tion, help prevent heart dis-ease and combat the effects of aging.

A new study published in the American Journal of

Clinical Nutrition found that the anti-inf lammatory ef-fects of cocoa consumption — yes, that means chocolate — may be beneficial against atherosclerosis.

The crossover tr ia l involved 42 subjects, who received either 40 grams of cocoa powder mixed with skim milk or skim milk alone. Markers of inflam-mation related to heart

disease were examined before and after each of the intervention period.

The study found that the expression of certain inflammatory markers was significantly lower in the trial’s cocoa group. This suggests that intaking the polypheols in cocoa (or chocolate) may offer protec-tion against cardiovascular disease. (NATURALLY SAVVY)

Chocolate may help the heart