It's the diet.
City dwellers tend to eat a lot more unhealthy foods. They also eat a lot less vegetables, fruit and nuts than their rural country(wo)men.
You want more microbes in your gut? Eat more plant-based food.
Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes
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Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes
#42"Moeller and others also suggest identifying the missing microbes may be the first step toward bringing them back. “If we determine that these groups were providing important functions to keep humans healthy,” Maccaro says, “perhaps we can restore them with probiotics.” Oh really? Nice submarine for Actimel, Yakult etc.
Well, it's either a pill, or moving out of the city, or a fecal transplant (assuming that the urban / rural divide is relevant, and not just a proxy for diet). I don't live in the city, but if I were told that I would be healthier with more of these microbes that my environment doesn't support, I'd opt for the pill.
Doing nothing is also an option! I'm not aware of an indigestion epidemic among city dwellers.
Being told to do something is not sufficient, especially when multi-billion dollar industries are behind it.
Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes
#43It's the iron fortified flour and then the people are like OMG I have celiac and what not. There's a reason breast milk and milk in general contains lactoferrin; guess what, they also remove it from most milk that is in supermarkets.
can you please expand on this?
Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes
#44Could this explain trends like increasing food allergies in countries where more and more people are becoming urban dwellers?
There's a guy (Jasper Lawrence, who had a horrible allergy problem) had heard of a study where they were testing to see if allergies was related to parasites. He was rejected from the study, so, long story short, he ended up flying to northern Africa and walking around barefoot to get hookworm. He now monitors and manages his hookworm infection with low doses of anti-parasite medication, and he sells soil infected with hookworms so that you, too, can get infected by hookworm and reduce/eliminate your allergies. Oh, and his allergies are gone.
I read about it here: https://www.ksl.com/article/20838871/man-infects-self-with-h...
But there are lots of stories and some studies on the subject as well. The original hypothesis was proposed in 1989 by David P Strachan. According to the theory, many modern diseases have gotten out of hand and are rapidly growing in industrialized western countries because of chlorinated drinking water, vaccines, antibiotics and the sterile environment of early childhood. Moreover, it is theorized that since we have become so good at preventing infections, we have upset the internal balance and ecology in our bodies. One missing element of hyper-clean and sterile environments is that our inflammatory responses do not function as they should. Parasites and bacteria play a symbiotic role in preserving our health.
Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes
#45Pretty much every culture around the world 100 years ago had some staple fermented food. Nowadays, a lot of people in western culture at least outright refuse yogurt or other fermented foods like saurkraut or pickled cabbage that used to be staples in these people's ancestor's diets a few generations ago. People are becoming even lactose intolerant. You have to fertilize your microbes so to speak and eat these sorts of foods. Plus once you are doing stuff like making your own yogurt, a jug of whole milk works out a lot cheaper than the chobani stuff.
Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, it's either a pill, or moving out of the city, or a fecal transplant (assuming that the urban / rural divide is relevant, and not just a proxy for diet). I don't live in the city, but if I were told that I would be healthier with more of these microbes that my environment doesn't support, I'd opt for the pill.
Doing nothing is also an option! I'm not aware of an indigestion epidemic among city dwellers. Being told to do something is not sufficient, especially when multi-billion dollar industries are behind it.
More research is needed.
However there is an obseity epidemic and a depression epidemic, and its plausible they are related. Which doesn't mean they are, but seems like something worth looking into.
Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes
#47Could this explain trends like increasing food allergies in countries where more and more people are becoming urban dwellers?
No post body was provided.
Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes
#48Does anyone know of probiotics with a variety of bacteria? Currently they (and yoghurts) seem to be just a single type, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If there are unusual bacteria out there where do they come from and how can we get them? I've done a bunch of anti-biotics in the last few years so what to get back to what I was.
I've had good luck with these, taken one in the morning and one at night.
https://www.amazon.com/Probiotics-Formulated-Probiotic-Suppl...
Now, instead of taking the probiotics, I make yogurt from whole milk (it's easy!) and open 3 probiotic capsules as the starter, letting it ferment for 24 hours to ensure all of the milk sugar is gone. This gives 2 quarts of yogurt and I eat a tablespoon every morning with breakfast. Way cheaper than the pills, plus I have a problem swallowing the capsules. Has worked great for me.
Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes
#49It's the diet. City dwellers tend to eat a lot more unhealthy foods. They also eat a lot less vegetables, fruit and nuts than their rural country(wo)men. You want more microbes in your gut? Eat more plant-based food.
Having lived both in the city and fairly rural, I can say that access to a healthy and varied diet is much much easier in the city. Both when it came to restaurants and buying and cooking food.
Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes
#50Once a gene has started expressing, it's pretty hard to flip the switch back to the off position. Losing the microbes is a big problem. It's just going to get worse. People seem to have this fetish for anti-bacterial everything.. soaps, coatings, etc. They take anti-biotics even for viral issues then they wonder why they start developing a new health problem they didn't have before, like a mood disorder or an autoimm…
Here in Indonesia, antibiotics can be bought over the counter without a prescription. Many people self medicate for a cough or runny nose (they don't distinguish whether viral or bacterial, most likely the average worker doesn't know the difference).
Few have the luxury to take a sick day so the pressure is on.