Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't even want to joke about that on HN, but it did cross my mind. Find a happy healthy person and (somehow) ask them for some fecal matter and do a transplant. Or just start licking butts... ugh
I think they found out when studying maternal vaginal swabbing for seeding microbiota Caesarean newborns that the bacteria were actually either airborne from the maternal fecal route or somehow getting into the baby from there
Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
151–160 of 216 posts
Re: Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a sample size of 1 as well. Probiotics didn’t help me but I’ve dealt with digestive issues for the last 4 years after a bout of food poisoning. I used to think gut flora / microbiome was quackery but I recently did an oral FMT (fecal microbiata transplant) the results were unreal. For reference, I’m a 37 y/o fit male and donor was 18 y/o female. After 2nd week I got the deepest sleep since I was a child (slept…
This is what doctors call "the honeymoon phase", and it can happen with various drugs and supplements. If it stops working, and you can't reproduce it the second or third time, then it's probably better to give up and look for another solution.
Re: Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
#153Re: Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disclaimer, I’m a software engineer for Ritual. Antidotally, I recently started taking a probiotic and have had great improvements in digestive health. I also have a chronic digestive disease. Ritual recently launched a probiotic which includes the two most studied strains, LGG and BB-12. Our formulation and technology is very much driven by science. Maybe it’s right for you. https://ritual.com/products/synbiotic-plu…
Off-topic: Please don't take this the wrong way. What sorts of engineering does an engineer at Ritual do? From an outside perspective it's just a website selling healthcare products. Is there some sort of big data driven approach to developing the products?
A fun example is that we did not have the concept of a cart at the very beginning. You don't need a cart when you only have one product, so why spend development time building that? My most recent work has been performance because that was worth spending time on now. Before that, I worked on allowing customers to update their subscriptions via an email magic link for the launch of Synbiotic+ (the probiotic). We then look at our data to see how effective our efforts were in supporting the hypothesis which initially kicked off the work. Hope that helps!
Re: Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
#155Re: Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having dirty sex with happy people is how our species has done this since the Dawn of man.
I didn't even want to joke about that on HN, but it did cross my mind. Find a happy healthy person and (somehow) ask them for some fecal matter and do a transplant. Or just start licking butts... ugh
Now a turkey baster with a partner whom has no STD's might be doable.
I once had a perpetually happy virginal, before me, girlfriend whom would have made a perfect donor.
Re: Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
#157Sample size of 1 here, but just hear me out. Probiotics are a cheap and low-risk. If you have any general inflammation type issues that don't seem to have a cause, it might be worthwhile to just try probiotics. My Dr. told me to try them for a digestive issue - and they sort of helped that. But a handful of other things unexpectedly improved. Acid reflux went from really bad to barely noticeable, and my skin really c…
I have a sample size of 1 as well. Probiotics didn’t help me but I’ve dealt with digestive issues for the last 4 years after a bout of food poisoning. I used to think gut flora / microbiome was quackery but I recently did an oral FMT (fecal microbiata transplant) the results were unreal. For reference, I’m a 37 y/o fit male and donor was 18 y/o female. After 2nd week I got the deepest sleep since I was a child (slept…
Re: Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
#158I finally beat my digestive issues and chronic fatigue (physical depression) which lasted 3+ years from 2019-2021. Without getting too far into it, here's the stuff that finally worked, weighted by immediacy on a scale of 10: - 10: Eating a serving of Brussels sprouts, preferably daily - 10: Taking about 3 psyllium husk capsules occasionally with FODMAP and spicy meals - 10: Taking a digestive enzyme occasionally wit…
You can't do all that stuff to yourself - and - go through COVID (and other things) which has caused widespread depression, and assume any of that had an affect one wary or another without a fairly big randomized trial isolating all of those elements.
Even just the notion of 'regime' will change people's psyches via placebo.
I mean, I would certainly 'feel' healthy if I did such a list of 'ostensibly healthy things'.
That said, I wouldn't doubt some of it did, and that we are just barely beginning to understand gut health.
Re: Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
#159I finally beat my digestive issues and chronic fatigue (physical depression) which lasted 3+ years from 2019-2021. Without getting too far into it, here's the stuff that finally worked, weighted by immediacy on a scale of 10: - 10: Eating a serving of Brussels sprouts, preferably daily - 10: Taking about 3 psyllium husk capsules occasionally with FODMAP and spicy meals - 10: Taking a digestive enzyme occasionally wit…
My two cents is the biggest factors were the keto and the stress. A low carb, high fat diet does not traditionally feature intact plant cell walls, or what we otherwise know as "fiber". There are literally thousands of different of variations of "fiber" of which we have catalogued only a few, but these structures feed the microbiota in your gut. And they really do depend on fiber in a profound way.
Without this fiber, they tend to starve and adjust to feed on the epithelial lining of your gut. It also gives an opportunity for the pathogens in your gut to "takeover", especially when paired with the stress since most of the "beneficial" microbes will tend to die off.
When you read stories of people who got an autoimmune problem, there's almost always a period of severe stress prior to it. My working hypothesis is this impairs the immune system which is what keeps the pathogenic bacteria in check through several mechanisms (pathogen-associated-molecular-pattern detection or PAMPs for instance).
Through much, much trial and error and a lot of scientific article research, I've found the most consistent way to restore microbiota ratios is with Vitamin D, followed by a clinically tested probiotic like Visbiome, followed by Kefir. The Vitamin D alone at moderate to high doses will get you very far, although it doesn't necessarily restore diversity (since Vitamin D in of itself does not contain any microbes) but it helps shift the balance of microbes through a variety of biochemical functions.
Vitamin D also helps with gum disease in my experience and in a way no other supplement or product has so far. Highly recommend and you don't even have to take a high dosage to see it for yourself. You just have to be consistent.
One last thing I'll say is that for whatever reason taking the supplement seems to work better than exposing yourself to sunlight, which is unusual, but there may be something about the biochemical pathway Vitamin D takes when consumed as a supplement as opposed through the cholesterol-synthesis that happens with UVB.
Re: Probiotics can support the effect of antidepressants
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Visibiome has OTC and rx-only probiotics products, the latter of which is used to treat severe IBS and ulcerative colitis. Their OTC products are also very high potency and regularly recommended by doctors as well. Also, nicer grocery stores typically have a refrigerated probiotics section, and those are typically good brands as well (Garden of Life is one). Generally, shelf stable probiotics are less potent and vari…
>Visibiome has OTC and rx-only probiotics products It's worth pointing out that the actual biotic payload is exactly the same between the two products, only the dosage is different. In other words, taking two packets of the regular unflavored powder should deliver the same payload as one packet of the rx-only "extra-strength" powder. I suspect the only reason the higher strength product exists, and is rx-only, is so…