This is a scientific American 60 second science.

I'm Christopher Intagiyata.

Your nose may be the first place you think of as a source of mucus,

but mucus is a major player in your gut too. There's antimicrobial

peptides and proteins that are present in there. Bacteria live there and forage on

the carbohydrates and it's a lubricant and helps you know sweep contents down the GI

tract without probably injuring the epithelial layer. Eric Martin's

microbiologist at the University of Michigan he says farther down the GI

tract in the colon the mucus builds a wall a barrier against friendly bacteria

As well as pathogens that could be transiting through.

But here's the problem. Your gut bacteria may chew right through that wall if you

skimp on fiber in your diet. Martin's and his team modeled that scenario in

mice who'd been born free of microbes. They seated the mice's guts with a human gut microbiome and then

fed them on a high-fiber diet, raw-milled corn, whole wheat, whole soybeans and oats.

It's about as raw of a diet as you can get. The human equivalent, double our

recommended daily intake of fiber. It's a lot of kale. That extreme high fiber diet helped

keep the mucous barrier intact, But in mice that had zero fiber,

or the kind of soluble fiber typically added to processed foods,

the fiber-eating members of the gut dwindled,

and their absence, it opened up more real estate for mucous

munching bacteria which boomed in number and tore through that protective mucous

wall leaving intestinal cells open for microbial attack.

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