Pajau Vangay, a refugees from South East Asia who settled in America for the last 40 years has never thought she would end up doing a research about people's gut or the diversity of microorganism which will determine if we are healthy or we are prone to chronic disease like gout, diabetes, cardiovascular disease or overweight and obesity.
She used to do pretty coding in computer science working in Silicon Valley, but that did not put her skills to its fullest potential until she did her phD microbiome research with the University of Mennisota when she met computational biologist Dan Knights, Dr. Kathleen Pera who reach out to migrant communities who always complaint "we should have been more healthier but instead we become more sicker."
This project has been made possible by the University of Minnesota and also approved by the White House to carry out a research for Hmong and Karen community back in Thailand and those who migrated to the US as refugee to see if changes environment impact the diversity of bacteria in people digestive system which lead to obesity. Hopefully this is not the last project, as in the future many migrants communities particularly Oromo, Latino, Somali, Nepali are expected to be followed suit.
Vangay said that there used to be microbe research to see if native population who move from rural to urban area experience changes in their microorganism diversity, but not migrant communities who migrate from other part of the world to start a new life in the United States.
There are 500 people from migrant community especially Hmong and Karen community both in Thailand and in the US participate in this research project called micro biome project to see what are the causes which lead these migrant communities to obesity.
This research examined migrant parents who immigrate to the US in different time and the second generations migrants born in the US for the last four decades experience changes of diversity of microorganism in their digestive system, even when they are very lean their micro biomes are very different from those in their homeland especially Thailand. The reasons, she said, are due to changing to new environments, lifestyles and the sources of their foods.
The research also test participants microbiomes with mice and found out that those who live in the US microbes cause inflammation in mice's digestive system. This means that Hmong and Karen migrants and their second generation live in the US experience problem in their digestive system which make them sick compare to those live in their homeland. It found out that those in Thailand have more diversity of microorganism and those who migrated to the US have less microbes in their digestive system. This means that those who have more are the healthy one compare to those who have less which are the not quit healthy ones.
In regards to environments and lifestyle, migrants community such as Hmong and Karen, has experienced huge changes. They came from an environments where they plant their own foods, being very active as subsistence farmers and eating more vegetables than meat to a new lifestyle of potato coach, convenient of transportation, less active and food portion overloaded with meat, sweet, salt, saturated fats, different environment where they get their foods from that could reduce their diversity of microorganism in their digestive system, even to the point where their microorganism in their digestive system cannot be differentiated from their caucasian counterparts, resulting in many chronic health issues particularly diabetes, overweight, obesity and gout to name a few.
Pajau Vangay said that many other researches also indicated that by having different dietary fibres can retain one's diversity of micro biome due to these microorganism love to digest the fibre that our body cannot absorbed.
Therefore, Pajau Vangay would like to recommend that migrants communities should maintain their traditional dishes and lifestyle of eating less meat but having more vegetables and staying active is the key to safeguard themselves from chronic diseases.#
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