Broadly speaking, your gut health can influence the health of your lungs. This could happen in many ways such as nutrition or infection, but usually, when the gut-lung axis concept is raised we are talking about how the gut microbiome shapes lung health.
The gut-lung axis concept suggests that the composition of the gut microbiome strongly influences lung health and disease. Sometimes these differences might arise because the immune system may recognize and respond differently to some bacteria than others. Other times differences could arise because compounds made or digested by gut bacteria spread beyond the gut.
The recent development of next-generation sequencing technologies has led to an explosion in research that has greatly expanded our understanding of how the microbiome might alter the course of many lung diseases. This is a rapidly expanding area of research sure to bring many more exciting insights into lung health in the next few years.
