A YouTube conversation (Ben Greenfield and a speaker) about understanding gut health. Key points: the appendix can hold biofilms that help reinoculate the microbiome after disruption; environmental exposure and diversity (e.g., outdoor contact) are encouraged to support microbiome diversity; and emerging ‘lab-on-chip’ ingestible sampling pills (pH‑activated, compartmentalized) aim to collect subsamples from different gut regions.
So appendix does actually serve quite an important role for reinoculating a devastated microbiome. It actually does hold kind of biofilms of our core microbiome. And if you're healthy, that structure should be kind of say, I take a heavy course of antibiotics, that structure should be helping me repopulate my gut microbiome.
We're outside all the time, swimming in rivers and lakes and oceans and also traveling a ton. So for me, you know, my language is diversity when it comes to what I try to expose myself to environmentally.
Like, well, that is showing up in your test. And it's actually something that I encourage a lot of people to do. Even the kind of tired statement touch grass, like really, actually go physically touch grass. You know, fecal sample is still really good. And unless you go into a hospital or something, you're not going to get biopsies at different sections in your gut microbiome. There are new technologies emerging called lab on chip technologies. This is still developing, but essentially the idea is you swallow a pill that's ph activated. So as the pill goes, goes down your gastrointestinal tract, there's different compartments that open up when activated at the particular ph, then to collect essentially a subsample.
