How Gut Bacteria Affect Blood Sugar

So much of our health depends on metabolism. And specifically, one of the most important players in this space is how well controlled is our blood sugar. In looking at blood sugar, how it changes following a meal turns out to be a central mechanism that has widespread implications both in the short term (how we feel today) and the long term (risk for serious health issues). I’m going to present a technical term here, postprandial glycemia, which you will hear mentioned quite a bit in this podcast. Postprandial means after a meal, and glycemic means blood sugar level. As such, we are exploring what happens to blood sugar after a meal, something we should all care about. 

Our guests today include Dr. Momo Vuyisich, Chief Science Officer at Viome. We will be discussing his fascinating new research that was able to accurately correlate the postprandial glycemic response with a unique measurement of the metabolic products produced by gut bacteria. Dr. Vuyisich was actually able to predict how people would respond to specific types of foods, in terms of their blood sugar response, by looking at these bacterial metabolic markers.

In that measurement of glycemic response is so central to understanding this research, I’ve also invited Dr. Casey Means of Levels to join us on the program again. Levels is a company that focuses on using a new technology, continuous glucose monitoring, which allows us to fully understand how our glycemic response plays out in the face of our food and other lifestyle choices.

This is an exciting program. Please enjoy!