The article tells about Professor Jeroen Raes, who works for the KUL (catholic university Leuven) and belongs to the Department of Microbiiology and Immunology. He thus studies the substance which leaves our bowels.
And that is quite interesting! Because of an action by the government, most people living in Belgium sent in a sample of their faeces and the prof now has the largest databank in the world. "From their faeces you know the people," the prof says.
Everyone of us has about 1,5 kilo of bacteria in our bowels. Depending on what you find in the faeces, you can tell where the person is from, for instance. One sort of bacteria is only found in Belgians who eat dark chocolate, while Dutchmen will have traces of milky products...
Another thing you can notice from the study of faeces is the age and gender of a person. Well, you can't tell the exact age, but you do know whether the test person is a child, a young person or an older one, also the gender.
But there are more interesting facts to this study. Right now, the professor researches how you can make obese mice slender by a transplant of the faeces of slender ones. Better yet, there is also a link to autism. In this case study, it was noted that mice with autism always looked for their food at a given spot. Once transplanted, they also went looking on other places. Suppose you could to the same with people....
If I had a lot of money, this is one study I'd give money to. Same goes for the research on Alzheimer and cancer.
No comments:
Post a Comment