The Microbiome File

[sengsational]

If you're interested in various explorations of microbes in our environment, here's an article about some research going on:

What’s Lurking in Your Showerhead - The New Yorker

If you read long enough, you'll get to the part about why this academic thinks women make better sourdough bread than men. Yum!

 

[wallygator69]

Hi,

This is a cool article on the subject from Pop Sci in August 2015

The Microbes In Your Home Could Save Your Life | Popular Science

Take Care,

Wally

 

[Chuckanut]

There's some research that indicates eating whole grains - not just products like bread made from whole grain flour - but eating the actual whole grains helps maintain healthy gut flora. Possibly because flour is digested higher in the digestive tract but with whole grains some of the nutrition lasts long enough to reach the gut microbes.

I think the problem with whole grain flour is that is is pulverized to the point where the fiber in it is to small to do its work. So, eating fibery things that are whole or cut up into chunks is better, though that doesn't do much for making good bread.

According to Dr. Lustig, the fiber lines the guts and helps things move downstream where the 'good' microbes feed on it. They need to eat too. Whole fiber also protects people from 'leaky gut syndrome'. Of course, this is all new and could change with time.

 

[CaptTom]

I've always suspected our current medical practices will be considered primitive in the not-too-distant future. Shoveling down pills and cutting open patients to remove things will seem as barbaric to future doctors as blood-letting is to us.

Then look at dentistry; outside serious diseases, most dental work is no more advanced than auto-body repair. Likewise with eye care; we don't usually fix the problem, just put a lens in front of it.

It's starting to change. Research is showing that there's more to cancer than just which organ it was first found in. It's not just "lung cancer", it's a specific mutation that happened in the lung. Data is piling up that treatments have to be customized to the individual patient.

And the whole idea of looking at the microbiome is only just beginning.

Hope it all happens fast enough to do ME some good.

 

[sengsational]

Hope it all happens fast enough to do ME some good.

Would you like to do something to advance the cause?

It's pretty easy and cheap. All you'll get personally is a "gee wiz" (nothing really actionable). You pay $89*, dirty a q-tip, and send it in.

You're now a "citizen scientist"! Yippee!

One thing you might get is some motivation to do (and not do) the kinds of things that increase (decrease) your microbiome diversity. You can make changes, then do another test and see if it "helped". That's in quotes because the science is in it's infancy.

If you've got some time, read wallygator's link from Popular Science, a few posts up. Very good overview. If you have less time, and just want a quick read, try Your Microbes, Your Health: Products of Your Age, Lifestyle, and More - uBiome Blog, posted yesterday. That article asks "how much are we able to harness our microbiome to take control of our health"

As we reach old age, our microbiome decreases in diversity, making our immune system more vulnerable. Low microbial diversity has also been correlated with frailty. Studies show that the elderly experience lower levels of Bifidobacterium, which has anti-inflammatory properties that can help curb disease.

* paid to ubiome.com...I'm just a fan-boy... I get no remuneration.

 

[JoeWras]

I started making my own Kefir. So far, so good. DW was dubious I could successfully drink milk that stayed out on the counter for 24 hours.

 

[msieweke]

There's an interesting video where Dr. Gominak talks about how taking D and B vitamins may help rebalance the intestinal microbiome.

Some interesting points from the video:

• There are 4(?) species of intestinal bacteria that make B vitamins.
• These bacteria seem to be dependent on vitamin D to thrive.
• Each species depends on B vitamins made by the other species to thrive.
• For a number of reasons, these bacteria may not be thriving in your microbiome.
• If you take vitamin D and mixed Bs, you may allow them to thrive and you would no longer need to take the Bs.
• Many benefits accrue.

 

[mamadogmamacat]

Wished it did make a difference for sleep, as i have been taking D and mixed B's for years and my sleep sucks since menopause, which was about 5 yrs ago.

Switching to a no sugar low carb diet and even before that, eating mixed fresh greens every day and more recently ( but before diet change) adding plain no sugar added kefir with no sugar added berries mixed in for flavor have dramatically improved gut health.

 

[harley]

I do pretty well for awhile, eating intelligently and taking Bs and Ds and other things. Then I get distracted, usually when travelling a lot, and things go to hell. I went in and the doctor took a picture of my current microbiome.

Time to get back on track, I guess.

 

[sengsational]

Nice graphic for the state of your gut, lol!

Sleep improved for me with wild green oats (yeah, I know, more than kind of bogus, but it really did seem to do something). Interesting video about sleep and the interplay between vitamin D, the B vitamins, and the gut microbiome. I've had a few vitamin d blood tests, but only after I was taking the supplement, and it always came out as not deficient (but maybe not as high as some recommend). The video is pretty convincing that you need the right kind of sleep...I have a (now discontinued) Zeo sleep monitor...I might break that out again and see what it says about my REM.

 

[misshathaway]

OK, I'll go there. Skip the kimchi and saurkraut and just go fecal transplant. Used as treatment for C-DIFF and other very messed up microbiomes that need a radical reset. Impressed that this was recently a plot line on Amazon's online show One Mississippi.

No I never did it but my dad had C-DIFF and it was just wretched. His thankfully responded to treatment without desperate measures.

 

[omni550]

Recent article on one person's experience with a poop analysis test

https://greatist.com/live/gut-health-poop-test

omni

 

[Chuckanut]

There's some research that indicates eating whole grains - not just products like bread made from whole grain flour - but eating the actual whole grains helps maintain healthy gut flora. Possibly because flour is digested higher in the digestive tract but with whole grains some of the nutrition lasts long enough to reach the gut microbes.

A good point.

I make my own grainola. Besides using far less sugar, I use rolled oats and rolled spelt flakes. Presumably, some of these flakes last a lot longer in the digestive system than pulverized grains in most flours.

Another trick is to use a medium grind flour. But, they are hard to find at most grocery stores. Also,baked good don't rise as well, and they aren't as 'light and fluffy'.

 

[CaptTom]

Recent article on one person's experience with a poop analysis test

https://greatist.com/live/gut-health-poop-test

The problem with this sort of test is there's not a clearly-defined "healthy" baseline to compare against, and virtually no knowledge of how individual microbes affect us, much less how they act together to affect us.

When that's all figured out, it will be a huge milestone in medicine.

 

[sengsational]

OK, I'll go there. Skip the kimchi and saurkraut and just go fecal transplant. Used as treatment for C-DIFF and other very messed up microbiomes that need a radical reset. Impressed that this was recently a plot line on Amazon's online show One Mississippi.

No I never did it but my dad had C-DIFF and it was just wretched. His thankfully responded to treatment without desperate measures.

I'm not sure how the topic came up, but a guy I just met that day said his relative was about to have a colostomy due to C-DIFF that didn't respond. I asked if they tried FMT and he said the doctor never mentioned it. He made a call right then. I didn't yet hear what ended up happening, but I'd like to think they tried FMT because it's got a great success rate.

 

[harley]

Here's an interesting article about the effect of the microbiome on cancer therapy. It was interesting to see a doctor say

“You can change your microbiome,” she added. “It’s really not that difficult, so we think these findings open up huge new opportunities.”

 

[sengsational]

^Wow! There's so much that has been ignored. It's great they're taking on the challenge of examining the gut bacteria along with everything else.

 

[mpeirce]

^Wow! There's so much that has been ignored. It's great they're taking on the challenge of examining the gut bacteria along with everything else.

Much of scientific investigation depends on the specific subject being interesting and approachable by scientists. If no one is interested in studying liver tumors in pagonian shrews, the science isn't going to get done.

Likewise, studying human poo has certain drawbacks - it's also hard to study colonies of bacteria inside living people.

It appears that some researchers have become convince that studying the, ahem, "human microbiome" is now worth it. Great!

 

[Meadbh]

The Guardian has an article just published about the microbiome.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...e-gut-health-digestive-system-genes-happiness

I recognized one of the names of the investigators. I went to medical school with him. Here he is giving a public lecture on the subject a year ago.

https://youtu.be/Iv7-RnvQ7yU

 

[flintnational]

In addition to kraut and other fermented veggies, we make yogurt. We use a commercial live yogurt as a starter and heat the milk overnight in our food dehydrator.

For the kraut and veggies we use special fermenting mason jar lids. The lids work great, minimize mold and include brewer's bubblers that allow CO2 to escape but keep oxygen out. They can be found at Amazon. The picture is an experiment. We are trying to make apple cider vinegar.


FN

 

[JoeWras]

In addition to kraut and other fermented veggies, we make yogurt. We use a commercial live yogurt as a starter and heat the milk overnight in our food dehydrator.

For the kraut and veggies we use special fermenting mason jar lids. The lids work great, minimize mold and include brewer's bubblers that allow CO2 to escape but keep oxygen out. They can be found at Amazon. The picture is an experiment. We are trying to make apple cider vinegar.
FN

That's cool. I want to try some more of these things when I have the time in retirement.

Right now, I'm culturing Kefir. It is incredibly easy as it requires no heating. Just strain, add milk, set it and come back 24 to 36 hours later. Repeat, repeat. I take a rest every now and then and refrigerate the grains for a few days when I have a surplus of milk kefir. Plus, kefir grains are a like a pet, you have to keep feeding them and taking away their "waste" (drinking it, in this case) otherwise they die. Kefir fights off the mold no problem, but I might try that contraption anyway just to be safe.

I'm still working on the timing to get the right balance of taste, which I understand is a difference between the yeast and bacteria winning. The timing changes as the seasons (temperature) change.

Kefir starter grains are readily available on Amazon. I've found after only a few weeks, my grains have multiplied enough I'm going to have to give 1/2 away ... or feed them to the compost pile.

 

[imoldernu]

Am very sorry that I don't have enough time left, to solve this.

... however... after many years of being a bit overweight, and having a voracious appetite, ...and... an "irregular system", I discovered sunflower kernels. That was about a year ago. Since then, whenever hunger attacks, I take a handful of seeds (3 0r 4 times a day)... that satisfies the pangs, and when the meals come, no "seconds"... not by discipline, but just don't need as much. Lost weight.
From high BP of 160/90... to 120/65... cholesterol from 312 to "normal". No, not just from sunflower seeds, but just an overall health improvement. All blood panel readings normal.

That's the first part. The second part of this is the best. After years of being different... I'm now a "regular guy".



Who knew? Will give some time to researching microbiomes, but in the meantime... some info on Sunflower Kernels:
Sunflower seeds

 

[JoeWras]

An interesting and even somewhat technical article from the popular press about a sugar additive contributing to gut imbalances.

Two bacterial strains that have plagued hospitals around the country may have been at least partly fueled by a sugar additive in our food products, scientists say. Trehalose, a sugar that is added to a wide range of food products, could have allowed certain strains of Clostridium difficile to become far more virulent than they were before, a new study finds.

My dad got c-diff in the hospital, and to quote him, "I'm ready to die instead of fight this." Thankfully, he did fight it and lived another 8 years. But it was really hell on earth for 3 months.

What I find interesting is that a lot of our problems in modern life seem to come from our ability to concentrate certain substances be it: sugar, alcohol, opioids, and so on. Most of these things are natural, but we upset the balance by overdoing it. This trehalose thing is a great example. Heck, I never heard of trehalose, and for good reason, it is one of the newest -loses out there.

 

[LOL!]

Trehalose is simply a molecule of two glucose molecules joined together. Sucrose (aka sugar) is a glucose and fructose molecule joined together. Or maltose which is also two glucose molecules joined together.

One can consider trehalose as simply another form of glucose.

Trehalose is sometimes used as biological anti-freeze or cryoprotectant.

I have seen food labels that hide the sugar content by listing 3 or more sugars as among the top ingredients as in: Maltodextrin, sugar, dextrose, maltose, .... , so maybe sometimes putting trehalose as an ingredient is a nice way of hiding sugar.

So I read the news article (and not the original paper), but trehalose would be no worse than having glucose around or even sugar (aka sucrose) based on what was reported because the first thing that happens to trehalose in the report is that it is converted to 2 glucose molecules by having the bond between the two glucose molecules in trehalose broken enzymatically.

A better comparison might be to compare trehalose to sorbitol or erythritol or xylitol which are sugars used in sugar-free gums for instance because humans do not have the enzymes apparently to convert these sugars into glucose. I don't know if gut microbes can do the conversion with their own enzymes. I do know that xylitol will poison and/or kill dogs.

 

[sengsational]

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I don't get anything from this, I just think that some day the microbiome will turn out to be incredibly important to human health span question, and to want it to become more heavily studied.

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