Oxygen - the role in gut health

Oxygen is vital to our survival.

But can oxygen play a role in the proliferation of gut bacteria? Enough to make you sick or heal you?

The gut is naturally low in oxygen, also known as hypoxic. Being low in oxygen is essential for nutrient absorption, immune responses, and maintaining the gut barrier.

Gut bacteria help establish this hypoxic environment by consuming oxygen as they prefer an anaerobic (without oxygen) environment.

When oxygen levels are low, your body produces a protein known as hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs). These proteins regulate your genes, create strong intestine walls and regulate your immune system.

But like everything else in your body, excess HIFs can lead to inflammatory disease like irritable bowel syndrome.

In a twist of fate, poor gut health leads to poor immune responses, which means a greater risk of infection, including gut infection.

To cure yourself, you take antibiotics. When you do, you kill all the bacteria in your gut. There are no longer adequate bacteria to regulate the oxygen in your gut and your oxygen levels rise.

So the condition required for bacteria to grow or a low oxygen state no longer exists. The very antibiotic that you took to cure you now result in poor gut health.

So what can you do?

One option is a medical solution. Take something that signals your body to induce a lower oxygen state in your gut. Clinical trials are ongoing to create medicines to do this.

A natural way to do the same thing is to consume a diet rich in fibre. Fibre is consumed by bacteria, the end result of which is something called short-chain fatty acids or SCFAs.

SCFA helps regulate the oxygen level in your gut, restoring a low oxygen environment allowing bacteria to grow again.

PS: I am simplifying the concept for ease of comprehension. Please do speak to a doctor in case you have a chronic digestion condition.

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