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Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

economist.com

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Re: Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

#11

Post by theprotocol »

amelius wrote: post #7
theprotocol wrote: post #2

Without S. Boulardii, I am a neurotic mess who can't digest anything at all nor think straight after eating anything, so I'm inclined to believe this hypothesis. I am also intrigued about what this means for criminality and how the line between illness and evil is likely to shift given the role of microorganisms in behavioral dysfunction; and more broadly, we don't like to admit it, but it seems that completely amora…

How did you find out?

I figured out that my problems were related to intestinal microflora because they became ten times worse after undergoing 3 courses of H. Pylori eradication therapy in the span of only a few months, and I never improved for years afterwards. That's the short version; in reality, I suffered for a decade and a half before I caught on that I could do something about it, and it took about 5 years after that to get any kind of positive result (which gave me the confidence to pursue it more seriously).

S. Boulardii is fairly widely known as having a pretty broad range of positive effects, so trying it out was a no-brainer. I have tried many, many things over the years and have improved greatly.

On a related note, it is common to assume that confirmation bias or the placebo effect would distort my judgment, but it turns out I am objective to a fault, as any objectively measurable intervention that I thought worked was later tested experimentally and confirmed my results.

There is actually nothing wrong with taking a guerrilla approach to health if doctors can't help you, as long as you don't fall for the "alternative for alternative's sake" fallacy, and are willing to bear the costs of iterating through the most promising interventions and not being disappointed when most of them fail.

Re: Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

#12

Post by ben_w »

amelius wrote: post #9

Perhaps a stupid question but can't they run some kind of differential analysis on blood values to find out what could be causing the effect on the brain? (I.e. take blood samples before and after introducing gut bacteria)

The impression I get is the biology is so messy that, even if that passed an ethics committee, they would still have difficulty isolating the stuff they were interested in from other effects they couldn’t control for.

It’s not impossible, but it is very expensive. This is partly why medical tech takes about 10-15 years to go from invention to deployment.

Re: Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

#13

Post by hanniabu »

chapium wrote: post #10
salamanderman wrote: post #5

I'm not too keen on the discouragement against self experimentation at the end of the article in this case. Self experimentation has greatly improved insulin pump technology in the past few years, and this situation has much much less risk.

How good are most experiments with a sample size of 1? Can the data gathered be independently verified?

It can be verified by others self experimenting with a sample size of 1, creating an aggregated larger data set. A type of decentralized trial, if you will.

Re: Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

#14

Post by ben_w »

chippy wrote: post #6

Reading about toxoplasma (a parasite of rats which can infect humans and alter their behaviour), I recall something about the common cold (a virus) and behaviour. My memory is fuzzy but there was a study that indicated that those with initial stages of a cold seek out human contact more and in the case of women, show more skin. The implication is that the virus seeks to replicate by altering our behaviour to transmit…

I have previously wondered if HIV could pick up mutations which made hosts more sexually active and promiscuous.

Re: Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

#15

Post by whitepoplar »

theprotocol wrote: post #11
amelius wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you find out?

I figured out that my problems were related to intestinal microflora because they became ten times worse after undergoing 3 courses of H. Pylori eradication therapy in the span of only a few months, and I never improved for years afterwards. That's the short version; in reality, I suffered for a decade and a half before I caught on that I could do something about it, and it took about 5 years after that to get any ki…

Did you adjust your diet, or are you taking supplements?

Re: Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

#16

Post by agumonkey »

chippy wrote: post #6

Reading about toxoplasma (a parasite of rats which can infect humans and alter their behaviour), I recall something about the common cold (a virus) and behaviour. My memory is fuzzy but there was a study that indicated that those with initial stages of a cold seek out human contact more and in the case of women, show more skin. The implication is that the virus seeks to replicate by altering our behaviour to transmit…

I had an argument with someone about colds, saying that external temperature favorited infection and they responded by saying the cause is more likely proximity in close warm spaces. I think our system is too complex for a tiny virus to manage to influence such behaviors.. but that's not impossible.

Re: Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

#17

Post by milliaan »

ben_w wrote: post #14
chippy wrote: post #6

Reading about toxoplasma (a parasite of rats which can infect humans and alter their behaviour), I recall something about the common cold (a virus) and behaviour. My memory is fuzzy but there was a study that indicated that those with initial stages of a cold seek out human contact more and in the case of women, show more skin. The implication is that the virus seeks to replicate by altering our behaviour to transmit…

I have previously wondered if HIV could pick up mutations which made hosts more sexually active and promiscuous.

my neighbor's mother makes $64 hourly on the laptop. She has been out of work for five months but last month her

payment was $15080 just working on the laptop for a few hours. Go to this web site and read

more.....www.geosalary.com

Re: Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

#19

Post by nitrogen »

agumonkey wrote: post #16
chippy wrote: post #6

Reading about toxoplasma (a parasite of rats which can infect humans and alter their behaviour), I recall something about the common cold (a virus) and behaviour. My memory is fuzzy but there was a study that indicated that those with initial stages of a cold seek out human contact more and in the case of women, show more skin. The implication is that the virus seeks to replicate by altering our behaviour to transmit…

I had an argument with someone about colds, saying that external temperature favorited infection and they responded by saying the cause is more likely proximity in close warm spaces. I think our system is too complex for a tiny virus to manage to influence such behaviors.. but that's not impossible.

All it takes is one simple chemical to completely alter a person's mind, mood, or behavior. Surely there are viruses large enough and substances simple enough for a virus to alter the production of a simple mind-altering compound?

Re: Gut bacteria may offer a treatment for autism

#20

Post by theprotocol »

whitepoplar wrote: post #15
theprotocol wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figured out that my problems were related to intestinal microflora because they became ten times worse after undergoing 3 courses of H. Pylori eradication therapy in the span of only a few months, and I never improved for years afterwards. That's the short version; in reality, I suffered for a decade and a half before I caught on that I could do something about it, and it took about 5 years after that to get any ki…

Did you adjust your diet, or are you taking supplements?

Both.

Regarding diet, I started observing the effects of everything I ate and adjusting accordingly, somewhat like an elimination diet. I was actually really clueless at first and had numerous deficiencies as a tradeoff for some of the symptoms disappearing (which was great but not sustainable). Over the span of years, this has improved and today I have no deficiencies and only relatively mild symptoms remain.

The biggest breakthrough was limiting fermentation, by taking the FODMAP IBS diet to its natural conclusion, and eliminating everything that would ferment (and thus increase intestinal microorganisms, which for me were imbalanced). What prompted me to do this was trying 2 similar probiotic formulations, only one of which had FOS. The one with FOS caused a huge flare up. So I greatly reduced fermentable things ("resistant starches," "soluble fiber," "FOS," "FODMAPs", fructans, sugar alcohols...). Caprylic acid supplementation really reduced fermentation whenever I made a dietary mistake.

I googled that idea and found the blog of Dr. Norm Robillard which advocates for a similar low-fermentation diet. Interestingly, the people who commented on his site seemed to divide into 2 camps: low-fermentation people vs. those who did well on the opposite diet (high starch / fermented foods).

Adding S. Boulardii then reduced my symptoms further (brain fog, chronic intestinal inflammation) and I feel pretty decent now.

I cannot yet figure out how to make it so my intestinal microflora is balanced enough that eating fermented and/or fermentable foods wouldn't destroy me. I'm still working on that in my spare time.

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