Can’t see the forest for the trees? Chop one down.

That’s my suggestion to you - albeit figuratively - anytime you lose sight of things while wandering about my proverbial stomping ground, dense and lush health and fitness information.

Then really eyeball that felled tree - again, albeit figuratively. Take it from me, a splinter in the eyeball is absolute agony.

Here’s an even better suggestion. Grab that bucksaw and let’s take one down together in an area where many researchers have recently roamed, The Land of Bad Gut Bacteria.

We’ll look at the cross section of its trunk and learn how one day of “bad” eating affects it.

How bad gut bacteria can harm your heart

Let’s say your breakfast yesterday included eggs; your lunch, cheese; your dinner, beef - and you had a bowl of premium ice cream later as you watched TV. While that may not equate to a day of fine feasting for you, it does for your bad gut bacteria.

They especially enjoy two of the nutrients in all the aforementioned foods, choline and carnitine. What you shouldn’t relish is when gut bacteria feed on both, they release trimethylamine, a chemical that the liver changes into trimethylamine N-oxide or TMAO.

A number of past studies have linked higher levels of TMAO to a higher risk of heart disease, heart attack, stroke, and death. A study published in the June 2017 issue of the Journal of the American Heart Association, for example, found the risk of “major adverse cardiovascular events” to be 1.3 to 1.4 times higher in subjects with the highest blood levels of TMAO when compared to those with low concentrations.

High blood pressure - a preliminary heart problem that often leads to those “major adverse cardiovascular events” - is one that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 47 percent of adult Americans currently have. Moreover, the CDC estimates the standard medications used to lower high blood pressure do not work for about 20 percent of those diagnosed with it.

A study performed at the University of Toledo and first shared three weeks ago at EB 2022, Experimental Biology’s annual conference held this year in Philadelphia, offers the reason why.

Researchers gave rats with high blood pressure a single dose of quinapril, a generic form of a commonly prescribed drug used to treat high blood pressure and most often sold under the brand name Accupril. The drug was less effective in reducing blood pressure in the rats that had more bad gut bacteria.

Next, the researchers gave all the rats another dose of quinapril but half also received, Coprococcus comes, a “bad” gut bacterium that seems to interfere with many of the most commonly used treatments for high blood pressure, including Lotensin (benazepril) and Monopril (fosinopril), as well as quinapril. The rats that received the combination recorded smaller reductions in blood pressure than those given only quinapril.

Later, when the researchers placed both quinapril and the bad bacterium in a petri dish, they found the drug lost much of its effectiveness.

More evidence for the ‘Snowflake’ theory

Because it serves as support for a belief I’ve espoused for years and dubbed the Snowflake Theory of Dieting, - that no two diets should be exactly alike because no two people digest foods in exactly the same way - consider what Dr. Tao Yang, Ph. D., Assistant Professor at the University of Toledo, said to Katharine Lang for a Medical News Today article about the results of the study.

“We are still in the early stages of determining the interactions between gut bacteria and antihypertensive medications. However, our current findings suggest that the same drug may not be appropriate for everyone because each person has a unique gut microbial composition with a unique profile of enzymatic activities.”

A “unique gut microbial composition” means you may not have nearly as many bad gut bacteria as I do. Or you have just as many, but different ones, so foods I eat and tolerate cause you discomfort.

Or that may you have so many more good than bad that you can seemingly overeat and not gain an ounce.

Any scenario, though, suggests that if we eat the same foods we won’t get the same results.

But in the same way the medicos know bad bacteria thrive on certain nutrients, good bacteria do so as well - and that they can produce metabolites that benefit your health.

For instance, when you eat the sort of dietary fiber found in beans, whole grains, fruit, vegetables, and nuts, good gut bacteria has a feast and short chain fatty acids result. When it comes to heart health, SCFAs are TMAOs opposite.

In studies of patients who have already experienced heart failure, those who then consume high fiber foods have a lower risk of death or need of a heart transplant. Moreover, in a 2018 review published in Current Nutrition Reports to assess the link between SCFAs and heart health, the authors contend that SCFAs “directly modulate host health” in ways that could protect against the effects of “energy dense diets” and lessen “the increasing burden of obesity.”