Antibiotics nearly double risk of developing IBD, doctors warn
1–10 of 57 posts
Re: Antibiotics nearly double risk of developing IBD, doctors warn
#2Makes a lot of sense. We know so little about the trillions of bacteria inside of us, and taking a nuke to them all is going to have consequences. There are probiotics tuned for IBD on the market, and one can only imagine the complexities of the ecological dynamics.
I personally believe that in 100 years there will be a real bacterial awakening in science understanding how much our microbiome affects so much about our health and happiness, and will look at antibiotics as a Neanderthal-like in their oversimplification.
Re: Antibiotics nearly double risk of developing IBD, doctors warn
#3Some observations:
- I'm surprised they could find controls who had never received antibiotics. I assume this over some time period and not lifetime
- For each exposure to antibiotics, there was a stepwise increase in risk from 1.11 to 1.38 to 1.55
- When they matched them to siblings, the risk went down (1.35 versus 1.88) suggesting a genetic component to the overall risk
Re: Antibiotics nearly double risk of developing IBD, doctors warn
#4Makes a lot of sense. We know so little about the trillions of bacteria inside of us, and taking a nuke to them all is going to have consequences. There are probiotics tuned for IBD on the market, and one can only imagine the complexities of the ecological dynamics. I personally believe that in 100 years there will be a real bacterial awakening in science understanding how much our microbiome affects so much about ou…
Many antibiotics dont actually kill gram negative/positive bacteria, they merely prevent them from reproducing. Now if you want to kill bacteria, look to Russian phages, or swallow some sea water where a 1ml sample will contain billions of phages but its pot luck if any of them are right one's you need for your bacterial infection. One other little know fact about antibiotics, is the penicillin based one's get metabolised in the liver into penicillamine which is used to reduce copper levels in the body and ironically copper also helps to kill bacteria.
https://www.nature.com/articles/151107a0
Considering what Penicillamine does to the body and how it affects Vit B6, you can see why you get pain in different parts of the body when you take too much Vit B6, however its also a good way to find out where bacterial levels are high in the body, dental fillings can be a common area.
Creatine gets broken down into creatinine and happens to be one of the few things that can kill both gram negative and gram positive bacteria, of course you need to consume a lot of it though, but havent worked out why we get told to not consume creatine for more than a few weeks though. Anyone know?
Re: Antibiotics nearly double risk of developing IBD, doctors warn
#5Makes a lot of sense. We know so little about the trillions of bacteria inside of us, and taking a nuke to them all is going to have consequences. There are probiotics tuned for IBD on the market, and one can only imagine the complexities of the ecological dynamics. I personally believe that in 100 years there will be a real bacterial awakening in science understanding how much our microbiome affects so much about ou…
I agree. But the key is going to be that you can't easily classify most microbes as "good" or "bad" without talking about the host factors (genetic, diet, etc).
Uropathogenic E. coli are a good example of this:
Bacterial virulence phenotypes of Escherichia coli and host susceptibility determines risk for urinary tract infections https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5653229/
One size doesn't fit all: unraveling the diversity of factors and interactions that drive E. coli urovirulence https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28217693/
Re: Antibiotics nearly double risk of developing IBD, doctors warn
#6Makes a lot of sense. We know so little about the trillions of bacteria inside of us, and taking a nuke to them all is going to have consequences. There are probiotics tuned for IBD on the market, and one can only imagine the complexities of the ecological dynamics. I personally believe that in 100 years there will be a real bacterial awakening in science understanding how much our microbiome affects so much about ou…
Many antibiotics dont actually kill gram negative/positive bacteria, they merely prevent them from reproducing. Now if you want to kill bacteria, look to Russian phages, or swallow some sea water where a 1ml sample will contain billions of phages but its pot luck if any of them are right one's you need for your bacterial infection. One other little know fact about antibiotics, is the penicillin based one's get metabo…
One downside to phages is that they replicate. Once you stop taking antibiotics, there is no risk that the treatment will replicate and potentially mutate inside of you. Otherwise, I agree.
With regards to creatinine, I'm sure you'd want to generally suppress your bacterial load if you don't have symptoms or an active infection. That could leave the door open for a worst bacteria or fungus to come along and fill the niche.
Re: Antibiotics nearly double risk of developing IBD, doctors warn
#7Purely an anecdote: I wrote in a related thread about 5 years ago how I had an allergic reaction and my guts became a mess after taking antibiotics for the first time in my life (around age 23) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10555891]. I managed to get better by changing my diet. In 2017 I had another course of antibiotics, got very ill again and was hospitalized, diagnosed with IBD (UC), and spent nearly 13 weeks in hospital. Only thing that keeps me in remission now is Azathioprine. Had to cut back on the fibre too, now my diet is mainly meat. I also became lactose intolerant, where I'd been drinking milk all my life up to 2017 (age 30).
Re: Antibiotics nearly double risk of developing IBD, doctors warn
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many antibiotics dont actually kill gram negative/positive bacteria, they merely prevent them from reproducing. Now if you want to kill bacteria, look to Russian phages, or swallow some sea water where a 1ml sample will contain billions of phages but its pot luck if any of them are right one's you need for your bacterial infection. One other little know fact about antibiotics, is the penicillin based one's get metabo…
One downside to phages is that they replicate. Once you stop taking antibiotics, there is no risk that the treatment will replicate and potentially mutate inside of you. Otherwise, I agree. With regards to creatinine, I'm sure you'd want to generally suppress your bacterial load if you don't have symptoms or an active infection. That could leave the door open for a worst bacteria or fungus to come along and fill the…
My understanding based on an expert here in the UK is that Phages only replicate as long as there is the bacteria around that they were bred to infect and replicate in. As soon as the bacteria levels drop, phages die as there is essentially no food for them to consume. Considering the timescales to develop phages for a strain of bacteria (2 weeks), the ideal treatment is antibiotics, then phages to complete the job, because even Flemming stated when he discovered Penicillin, you need to keep taking these antibiotics until the infection is gone, but today many doctors just prescribe a course for 7-14days, and then you have to go back to get another course if they will prescribe another course, at least on the NHS its like that, and thats when you can get an appointment in my experience.
Also bacteria can go into dormancy developing biofilms in different parts of the body and creatinine wont work then. As the immune system attacks the food we eat bar some exceptions like starch as the only sugar not attacked, when we do a water only fast the number of immune cells drop as the numbers are not needed to attack the food. So the lower number of immune cells concentrate on attacking pathogens and faulty cells. Considering Lent used to be 40days of water only fasting, and there was no modern medicine back then, it seems observation and trial and error over thousands of years highlighted a suitable way to keep religious followers healthy, a necessary requirement for religions back then. Today science can explain why water only fasting works for so many illnesses. It seems Herbet Shelton was good at observing considering what we know about Vit D https://web.archive.org/web/20110222200902/http://www.soilan...
However, one of the reasons why his Hygienist methods ie water only fasting were not popular is because some undiagnosed health conditions caused sudden deaths when on a water only fast, so this is why water only fasting is not popular in the medical industry, but Socrates called water only fasting the physician from within, so even the ancient Greeks had made their own observations of what worked way back then with their limited toolset.
Re: Antibiotics nearly double risk of developing IBD, doctors warn
#9Some observations: - I'm surprised they could find controls who had never received antibiotics. I assume this over some time period and not lifetime - For each exposure to antibiotics, there was a stepwise increase in risk from 1.11 to 1.38 to 1.55 - When they matched them to siblings, the risk went down (1.35 versus 1.88) suggesting a genetic component to the overall risk
My guess is the control group wasn't made of people with no history of antibiotics. They just used the model to predict the risk difference between zero and one time of taking antibiotics. The control was people from the general population, and the "test" was people who had already developed IBD.
Though there are people, like me, who are allergic to many common antibiotics. Between some bad reactions in childhood and an emergency three years ago (over two decades), I never had antibiotics.
Re: Antibiotics nearly double risk of developing IBD, doctors warn
#10Read _Never Home Alone_, ch 10 "Look What the Cat Dragged in (https://magazine.scienceconnected.org/2020/05/book-review-ne...) to learn about Toxoplasmosis gondii to blow your mind.
The whole book is excellent and there is supporting evidence therein about our personal biota impacting our health, especially around allergies.