What is Flora?
Flora is the scientific term for a group of plant or bacteria life also known as mircobiome.
It is often contrasted with the term “fauna,” which is used to describe the animal life of the same particular area. In health and medicine, flora is the term used to describe the microorganisms that exist on or within the human body, such as the gut flora of the human body, the term refers to bacteria, yeast, and other fungi. It has become exceedingly apparent that the gut flora plays an important role in both our health and our vulnerability to disease.
Flora is found your large intestine. It is estimated that there are more than a thousand types of microbes in your body. ( microbes make up anywhere from 25% to 54% of your stool.) This world of microorganisms is separated internally from your body through a single layer of cells on your large intestine—cells known as epithelial cells.
Gut flora is extremely important in immune system protection and metabolism.
For these important functions, there needs to be an optimal preponderance of “friendly” bacteria.
There appear to be two ways in which the gut bacteria support our immune system. The first is that helpful bacteria provide direct protection for the lining of our large intestines, keeping out substances that would be harmful to us. When this system is compromised, a state of increased intestinal permeability may be present. The second is that favorable gut bacteria work with the immune system at the level of the lining of our intestines to fight against disease-causing bacteria or other substances.
Flora plays an important role in providing us with vitamins and other nutrients essential to our health and also interacts with carbohydrates that were not digested in the small intestine.
This interaction provides further nutrients, encourages epithelial cell growth, and modulates fat storage.
It is now recognized that a less than optimal composition of gut flora can contribute to health problems, both digestive and non-digestive. The health problems that for now appear to have direct links to an unhealthy balance of the gut flora.
Keeping your stress down, minimizing antibiotic use, and eating a well-rounded nutritious diet all hold the potential for optimizing your gut flora. Although sometimes controversial colon hydrotherapy can help boost the healthy bacteria by flushing out the bad bacteria allowing the healthy flora to feed off of the bad bacteria leaving the body with a better homeostasis.
