Can You Clear Out Microplastics With Kimchi?

Microplastics are a growing problem.

Not only that, it’s rather in their nature to be an increasingly growing problem within ourselves—that is to say, much like with heavy metals, they’re a lot easier to get into our body than they are to get out again, and that means they tend to accumulate.

See for example:

• Three Surprising Ways Microplastics Can Enter Your Body
• The Worst Cookware Lurking In Your Kitchen
• Are You Inhaling Microplastics In Your House?

And, once there, they cause problems. We’ve talked about some of those, too:

• Microplastics Now, Alzheimer’s/Parkinson’s Later?
• It’s Not Fantastic To Be Plastic
• Microplastics found in artery plaque linked with higher risk of heart attack, stroke and death

So, what to do about it?

Minimizing exposure is the usual go-to, and there has even been some progress with reducing the microplastic contamination of drinking water, for example: New Way To Remove 98% Of PFAS “Forever Chemicals” From Water!

But, it may be that there’s a way to get them out of the body:

Can we let the kimchi eat it for us?

First, for any unfamiliar with kimchi as a food, it’s fermented vegetables, and as such, usually has live bacteria that we can enjoy as health-giving probiotics.

For why that’s important and how it helps, see: Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)

Now, here’s where kimchi comes in specifically when it comes to microplastics:

Researchers (Dr. Se Hee Lee et al.) studied a bacteria known to its friends as Leuconostoc mesenteroides CBA3656, which is a lactic acid bacterium isolated from kimchi, wondering whether it could bond to microplastics (and thus be a method of removing them from our gut).

The good news: in laboratory testing, the bacterium attached to about 87% of polystyrene nanoplastics under standard conditions.

However, a lot of microbes can do that sort of thing in a petri dish; it doesn’t mean they can do it in the intestines.

The better news: when researchers simulated conditions resembling the human intestine, CBA3656 still bound to about 57% of the nanoplastics. A comparison bacterium’s binding fell to only 3% under the same conditions, so you can see how this is a big win for L. mesenteroides.

The best news yet: when testing it further in a mouse study, specifically in germ-free mice given the kimchi-derived bacterium, researchers detected more than twice as much nanoplastic in feces compared with mice that did not receive it.

In other words, it not only bonds to the microplastics, but does also actively facilitate their excretion.

You find each of these experiments in the paper itself, here: Efficient biosorption of nanoplastics by food-derived lactic acid bacterium

The caveats? Firstly, that it hasn’t been tested in living human participants yet, and secondly, that the gut is a complicated place and there could be (almost certainly are) factors that will change the outcome on a person by person basis.

But still, this is very promising, and we already know that for most people in most circumstances, eating kimchi is a good idea for gut heath in general, so why not enjoy it?

Want to learn more?

You can learn how to make your own kimchi, with this excellent book that we reviewed: Fermenting Everything – by Andy Hamilton

…as well as learn more about the science behind it, with this one: Ferment: The Life-Changing Power of Microbes – by Dr. Tim Spector

And for a much deeper dive into the broader topic of avoiding the toxins the industrial world is keen to throw our way, check out:

Healthy Living in a Contaminated World – by Dr. Donald Hoernschemeyer

Take care!