SHR

Thrīv Advance provides 350 million colony forming units of Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium longum, per serving. But these aren’t just any bacteria, they are lactic acid bacteria. Lactic acid bacteria are a diverse group of microbes that feed on carbohydrates and produce lactic acid as the major end product. It is thanks to this group of organisms that we are able to enjoy the sour taste of yogurt, cheese, sauerkraut, and kimchi, to name a few commonly eaten fermented foods. More importantly, these bacteria are also some of the first to populate the infant gut, as they are present on the breast skin and in the breast milk of breastfeeding mothers. In fact, women’s breasts harbor a unique set of microbes – their own microbiome, if you will. Although most people immediately think of the gut when the microbiome is mentioned, there are numerous microbiome communities on and within the body....

Are siblings to blame for body composition? This is a question that pondered in the minds of researchers from Brazil, who used data from a birth cohort in 1993 to evaluate the how the number of siblings in a family was related to body composition. Ultimately, 5249 mothers agreed to participate, and their children were assessed at ages 4, 6, 9, 11, 13 and 18 years with the Bod Pod. After adjustment for possible confounding variables, there was a significant association between the number of siblings and fat mass in both boys and girls, while only in girls was muscle mass was associated with sibling number. Boys who had more siblings were less fat and had a lower BMI, while girls with more siblings had less fat and more muscle. What are the “healthy” and “unhealthy” microbes? The human gut is home to trillions of microbes that outnumber the cells in...