NSAS Idea Suggestion #9 - Influence Of Drug Overuse On The Human Microbiome

In this series I propose daily ideas for new members who are interested in becoming #steemstem authors.

NSAS: New STEM Authors Support

I will post an idea a dayish (it is the goal to post daily, but again real life>steemit for now). With this idea I will include a short description about aspects you may be interested in. If you read this idea proposal, and you like it, and you want to write about it:

Go to the comments and write: "I, username, claim this idea"

Obviously "username" is where you write your own username. This is so that I know who is interested in @steemstem and science in general and I am always looking for a good read. This is honor system stuff, so please respect someone claiming an idea. Again, this is just the first step towards writing a good science post. There is more to it. Do your research, use scientific sources and try to use some proper language and attractive design.
This series will have their own hashtag #nsas, so that you can go back and sort through some of the ideas I have shared and what people made out of it. If you decide to use the idea I propose, please also include #nsas on your posts so that I can have a look at it and maybe get you connected in the steemstem group.
Please also visit @steemstem on steemit as well as on Discord. Follow the guidelines and appreciate the community. That means engage, upvote and comment until your fingers bleed.

Enterococcus faecalis - Public Domain
I know, I have been talking a lot about microbes lately. That is because I have always had an interest in biotechnology and synthetic biology. I think it is cool to alter microbes and make them produce stuff that we cannot make synthetically. Rather than just copying nature, we can just use it. Anyways, I am drifting off.
Today’s idea is based on the gut microbiome once more. In one of the previous ideas I suggested to look at a Nature review about changes in gut microbiome as a response to nutrition. This idea deals with changes of our gut microbiome as a response to drug overuse. Here drug overuse shall be defined as using drugs (especially antibiotics) when it is absolutely unnecessary. There is a doctor, Martin Blaser, who wrote a book called “Missing Microbes”. In it he describes how our microbiome is linked to various diseases such as obesity, diabetes and asthma. While I do not like how heavily advertised his book is on his website, this is a very intriguing thesis.
For this post, you will have to look at statistics that look at occurances of above diseases over the years. Then you can try to look at the amount of antibiotics that are being used every year. It would be interesting to compare data from the 1940s, when we started using antibiotics, to today, when patients demand antibiotics for every sneeze.
Here are various ways that our gut microbiome may be linked to obesity and diabetes:

1. Efficiency of energy harvesting
2. Inflammation

Number 1) I have not yet researched, but I rely on what my lecturer said. You will obviously have to find adequate articles. For number 2) I can recommend the Nature paper by David and coworkers. Here you can find that a animal-based diet will lead to an increase in certain bacteria that are pro-inflammatory.
I think this should give you a good start if you choose to pursue this topic.

Previous Idea Suggestions:

• Suggestion #1: Onions and their Health Benefits
• Suggestion #2: Tea - The Silent Killer
• Suggestion #3: Essential Oils
• Suggestion #4: Biotechnology And Beer-Brewing
• Suggestion #5: Antioxidant Hype - Claimed by @deholt, build on by @csusbgeochem1
• Suggestion #6: Your Diet Changes Your Gut Microbiome Faster Than You Think
• Suggestion #7: Target Delivery Of Cancer Therapeutics
• Suggestion #8: Science Behind The Conspiracy Theory Phenomenon

As always,
Cheers @lesshorrible!