Bile acid

So once again, is there anything that inflammation does not have its hand in when it comes to helping you? feel better or making everything worse.

So we talked about the primary and secondary bile acids.

We'll kind of come back to them, but let's talk about symptoms of your gallbladder.

Like, how do you know if this is you? You know, I had an ultrasound recently for something else and they were like, oh, you have some tiny little gallstones.

And we can use, again, a derivative of that with taurine bound to the UDCA, the UDCA.

So this is called TUDCA.

So again, this is using specific bile acids in order to try to dissolve these and move them on out.

And sometimes this can work.

It's the principal site at which we absorb nutrients and encounter those dietary antigens from food, as well as bacteria from the environment, I must add.

It's also central to the recycling of bile acids, which are produced within the liver system, and contains a substantial proportion of the body's immune tissue.

This creates an incredible, unique, active interface where food microbes, microbial metabolites, the intestinal barrier, that one cell lining that protects the rest of your body from what you eat.

Yet, despite being hugely important, small bowel is much more difficult to access and study.

The interesting question is whether microbial activity can help restore this relationship.

My view is yes.

Bile acids may be an important part of that story.

We tend to think of bile acids as simply detergents that help us digest and absorb fats.