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Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

science.org

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Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#121

Post by K0SM0S »

timfsu wrote: post #31
bejelentkezni wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is that supposed to mean?

Guessing that this means there are a lot of confounding variables other than gut biome (environment, diet, genetics, etc) that are very difficult to isolate to prove causation, as opposed to correlation.

Gut biome being one of the most promising area of research, whose earth-shattering potential is about on par with the sheer complexity of the problem.

If you thought ML was difficult, try modeling a human being's digestive tube from mouth to anus down to the cell: welcome to a category of problems where climate and gravity are the "simple" ones.

On the other side of that space though, potentially the promise to increase by orders of magnitude our mastery of human condition both biologically and experientially.

Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#122

Post by tompccs »

I'd put microbiome research high up on my list of things which will turn out to be junk science in a few years. A lot of the actual numbers in this are pretty tenuous. Primates have 80 species of bacteria and city dwellers have 50? Wow, stop the presses.

A few years ago the fashionable thing was colonic irrigation (see https://journals.lww.com/ajg/fulltext/2009/11000/clinical_ef...). Now it just seems the pendulum has swung the other way and we need more crap in our colons, not less.

We're looking for reasons why we feel sick all the time but the reality is beyond basic things like being too fat and too sedentary, we are healthier than ever, and many many people had wretched miserable lives of chronic pain before modernity. The expectation of health is a modern conceit and this research is just a reflection of the constant anxiety that there is something wrong with us all - a cultural hypochondria.

Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#123

Post by TranquilMarmot »

subsubzero wrote: post #103

Lacking these gut microbes has been posited to lead to depression and effect mood by a few researchers: https://www.science.org/content/article/evidence-mounts-gut-...

The future of antidepressants is fecal transplants for healthy gut bacteria (not even kidding)

Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#124

Post by woodruffw »

theonething wrote: post #113
woodruffw wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, do not give yourself hookworms.

I get they are bad, but you seem to speak from experience, either yours or others. Out of curiosity, why not? What can happen?

The history of hookworms in the US is the history of millions of intellectually and physically stunted children and adults[1].

[1]: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-a-worm-gave-the-so...

Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#125

Post by thematrixturtle »

antiterra wrote: post #17
haklport wrote: post #8

"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.

Unfortunately, the most effective treatment I know of to change gut biome is bacteriotherapy via a method many people find off-putting and violating. I think, for the time being, people are much more likely to accept a probiotic.

I take it you mean fecal transplants, aka inserting somebody else's feces up your rectum?

Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#126

Post by easytiger »

GuB-42 wrote: post #118
dannyw wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can think of this being evolutionary beneficial, if some milk is bad, the whole village don't all get sick. Also a possible reason for why people have different taste preferences.

It seems that lactose tolerance is the new thing here. Lactose intolerance is normal, but for a few people, presumably dairy animal farmers, something happened to their genes and they became tolerant, and it was an evolutionary avantage because they had access to all that milk. But because access to farmed milk is relatively recent from an evolutionary standpoint and people can live with lactose intolerance, the trai…

Or people who worked out they were tolerant to it, farmed it, and the high density nutrients allowed faster more reliable development of healthy children in adverse conditions. i.e. North Western Europe.

Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#127

Post by actually_a_dog »

tompccs wrote: post #122

I'd put microbiome research high up on my list of things which will turn out to be junk science in a few years. A lot of the actual numbers in this are pretty tenuous. Primates have 80 species of bacteria and city dwellers have 50? Wow, stop the presses. A few years ago the fashionable thing was colonic irrigation (see https://journals.lww.com/ajg/fulltext/2009/11000/clinical_ef... ). Now it just seems the pendulum h…

Given that the ratio of bacterial to human cells in a typical human is about 1:1, I'd wager you're wrong on that. This sounds rather like a "shallow dismissal" that buts up against the gudelines here, as well.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4991899/

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#128

Post by dhzhzjsbevs »

tompccs wrote: post #122

I'd put microbiome research high up on my list of things which will turn out to be junk science in a few years. A lot of the actual numbers in this are pretty tenuous. Primates have 80 species of bacteria and city dwellers have 50? Wow, stop the presses. A few years ago the fashionable thing was colonic irrigation (see https://journals.lww.com/ajg/fulltext/2009/11000/clinical_ef... ). Now it just seems the pendulum h…

I'll take that bet.

I think we're going to find the opposite in a few years.

Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#129

Post by hprotagonist »

chimeracoder wrote: post #114
hprotagonist wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and west african; by two entirely separate mechanisms, which i’ve always found to be quite cool.

> and west african; by two entirely separate mechanisms, which i’ve always found to be quite cool. What's the separate mechanism? I'm only aware of one set of genes coding for adult lactase production.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17159977/

Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#130

Post by corrral »

tompccs wrote: post #122

I'd put microbiome research high up on my list of things which will turn out to be junk science in a few years. A lot of the actual numbers in this are pretty tenuous. Primates have 80 species of bacteria and city dwellers have 50? Wow, stop the presses. A few years ago the fashionable thing was colonic irrigation (see https://journals.lww.com/ajg/fulltext/2009/11000/clinical_ef... ). Now it just seems the pendulum h…

> We're looking for reasons why we feel sick all the time but the reality is beyond basic things like being too fat and too sedentary, we are healthier than ever, and many many people had wretched miserable lives of chronic pain before modernity. The expectation of health is a modern conceit and this research is just a reflection of the constant anxiety that there is something wrong with us all - a cultural hypochondria.

Truly, "eat less trash; eat more veggies; eat less total; and move around at least an hour a day" is such good advice for most of us in "the West" that following it somewhat well would provide 100x more benefit than the next-closest thing. Plastic additives? Gut microbes? Fructose versus sucrose? Balance of omega fatty acids? Specific exercise routines? Forget all that unless you're already eating really well and staying active daily, which very few of us are.

When I read articles about these kinds of things and start to get the urge to act on them, I try to remind myself that I should go do a few squats or walk around the block a couple times instead.

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