Preventing Colon Cancer May Begin In Your Mouth

Colon cancer is one of the most common cancers people develop today. In many parts of the world it’s the leading cause of cancer death in people under the age of 50. Scientists keep finding the same culprit hiding inside colon tumors removed from cancer patients: a bacterium called Fusobacterium nucleatum. Other bacteria turn up too, but F. nucleatum is the one looking more and more like an actual cause of colon cancer, not just a bystander.

Could a specific bad gut bug cause colon cancer?

When you find bacteria in a tumor, how do you know if they caused the cancer or just moved in after the cancer was already there? Several clues point toward F. nucleatum being a causative agent:

• It switches on cancer-driving pathways inside colon cells, including damage to their DNA.
• When researchers put it into an animal’s colon, the animal develops cancer.
• It’s also been found in pancreatic tumors, suggesting it isn’t picky about where it causes trouble.

The only way to prove beyond doubt that this bacterium causes cancer in people would be to infect healthy volunteers and see who gets cancer. Obviously nobody would ever run that experiment, so total proof isn’t possible, but the circumstantial evidence is strong.

In one study, 74% of colon cancer patients had F. nucleatum in their tumors, at levels 250 times higher than in healthy people. In another, patients with high amounts of the bacterium were far more likely to have cancer that had spread to their lymph nodes (59% of cases) compared to patients with low amounts (0%).

This bacterium originates in your mouth

1. nucleatum actually lives mainly in the mouth. It’s the single most common species there. It shows up in even bigger numbers when someone has gum disease (gingivitis or periodontitis), and it’s also been linked to oral cancers.

You’d assume the obvious path is: bacteria build up in the mouth, you swallow saliva, and the bacteria ride down into your colon. But a research team in Israel found something more surprising. The bacteria don’t mainly travel by being swallowed; they get into your bloodstream directly, through everyday actions like brushing your teeth, flossing, or chewing. Once in the blood, levels can reach roughly 10,000 bacteria per milliliter. From there, the bloodstream carries them to the colon.

This fits a bigger pattern researchers are noticing: bacteria that normally live in your mouth, stomach, or intestines aren’t necessarily stuck there. They can slip into the bloodstream and settle in other parts of the body entirely. This is likely how a probiotic taken by mouth, like B. infantis, can end up in breast milk and benefit a nursing baby, or how another probiotic, L. reuteri, taken orally can end up in the vagina and help fight off yeast infections. Your gut isn’t a sealed pipe; it’s in constant two-way contact with your bloodstream and the rest of your body.

In people with a leaky gut, the intestinal lining is excessively permeable, allowing too much bacteria to seep into the bloodstream. Glutamine is the most important nutrient for healing and sealing the gut, making it a healthier barrier.

How to reduce levels of this bad gut bug

If bacteria from your mouth can travel through your blood and potentially help trigger colon cancer, how can we prevent that?

So far there’s no proven prevention plan yet, but there are a few sensible, low-risk habits worth adopting . Your mouth alone is home to about 100 billion bacteria across roughly 700 species, and how you treat that ecosystem seems to matter.

• Cut back on foods that feed the “bad” mouth bacteria. Sugar and starch can encourage the growth of bacteria which throws the mouth’s balance out of balance and creates more acidity. The acidity raises the risk of cavities and gum disease. Insufficient vitamin C promotes bleeding gums, allowing bad bacteria easier access to your bloodstream.
• Don’t rely on mouthwash to “clean out” your mouth. Just as wiping out gut bacteria with antibiotics tends to backfire, wiping out mouth bacteria with mouthwash disrupts a delicate ecosystem rather than fixing it.
• Keep up good oral hygiene — regular brushing and flossing, to hold gum disease at bay and keep levels of bacteria like F. nucleatum in check. That said, this matters most for people who still eat a lot of sugar and refined grains; it likely matters less for those who’ve already cut those foods out.
• Pay attention to gut health, too. It probably takes more than a disrupted mouth environment for F. nucleatum to settle into the colon and drive cancer. An unhealthy gut microbiome is likely part of the equation as well, since a disrupted gut is increasingly linked to cancer risk in general. BactoClear capsules contain the essential oils of clove, oregano and thyme, plus berberine. They help reduce levels of bad bacteria in the intestines.

A lesson from hunter-gatherers

Traditional hunter-gatherer groups — the Hadza of Tanzania, the Maasai of Kenya, the Yanomami of the Amazon, and others — almost never get cavities, gingivitis, or gum disease, despite having no toothbrushes, floss, toothpaste, or dentists. They also have essentially no colon cancer, hemorrhoids, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, or inflammatory bowel disease. They do face infections, parasites, and injuries, but not the gut-related “diseases of modern life” that are so common in industrialized countries. Their mouth and gut bacteria look very different from ours. There’s likely a real lesson in that for the rest of us.

Reference

The above statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any disease.