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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

#171

Post by ssnistfajen »

justsomeguy123 wrote: post #167
ssnistfajen wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point exactly which part was "over-the-top" or "aggressive"? Or is calling out that factually incorrect things are, well, factually incorrect somehow unacceptable nowadays? The world needs less pseudoscience misinfo, not more.

I re-read your post and while it's not overly aggressive it's the difference in tone and approach that get you. The original poster was like the hippie encouraging home-made yogurt and you were like the school principal saying 'this is bull, store yogurt has scientifically the same benefits'. PS: I also learned while writing this I can't spell yogurt. Thanks spellchecker!

Sadly the topic of lactose intolerance is rife with misinfo, biases, and dogwhistles, hence my rapid-fire questions in the previous comment. Most commercial yogurt products sold in grocery stores today are heavily laden with sugar and so mildly fermented that their probiotic quanlities are nearly nullified. Commercial unflavoured kefir is slightly better, but the overall probiotic effect is still questionable since we don't have affirmative answers on how much of the microbes can survive through our stomach acid, or how much of them can establish in our guts vs. heading straight for the exit like passengers on a roller coaster.

As for the spelling of yoghurt there's no correct version honestly, they are all transliterations of the same Turkish word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogurt#Etymology_and_spelling

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

#172

Post by UberFly »

prometheus76 wrote: post #44
db1234 wrote: post #2

Could 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 wi…

"he sells soil infected with hookworms so that you, too, can get infected by hookworm"

Well, when Fry ate the truck-stop egg-salad sandwich in a Futurama episode the worms he ingested really helped him, so sign me up!

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

#173

Post by insaider »

A theory: this decrease in gut microbiome diversity directly correlates with an increase in fatigue.

Ever since the first time I had antibiotics I've suffered from chronic fatigue, I'm pretty sure there's a strong connection here to the bacteria in my gut as it often feels like the main symptom is a reduced ability to digest food.

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

#175

Post by pojzon »

mulmen wrote: post #161

This article is mostly cliche popsci trash that isn’t worth reading. Good for a game of logical fallacy bingo. The only interesting development seems to be the methodology but that only gets a passing mention. The rest is basically fearmongering. > In humans, for example, gut bacteria influence how the immune system responds to pathogens and allergens, or interact with the brain, affecting mood. Ok. But what does tha…

Whats scary is that we have more and more civilization diseases and we have no idea whats causing them beside guesses.

Worsening of the environment we live in impacts us in ways we cannot even imagine.

Scary is that we cannot go back, coz its financially impossible for most.

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

#176

Post by insaider »

mulmen wrote: post #161

This article is mostly cliche popsci trash that isn’t worth reading. Good for a game of logical fallacy bingo. The only interesting development seems to be the methodology but that only gets a passing mention. The rest is basically fearmongering. > In humans, for example, gut bacteria influence how the immune system responds to pathogens and allergens, or interact with the brain, affecting mood. Ok. But what does tha…

Sounds like you're fighting confirmation bias with confirmation bias.

Your points are valid, don't get me wrong, but there is also a lot of research causally linking microbiome deficiencies with various health problems.

Also worth noting your shots seem more aimed at the journalist's style than the researcher's work. I for one, think this is super valuable and promising research

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

#177

Post by steve_adams_86 »

lemming wrote: post #166
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is the salt though, and examine says as much: > Some myths contain a grain of truth. Studies have associated excess salt with hypertension (high blood pressure),[54] kidney damage,[55] and an increased risk of cognitive decline.[56][5 The thing is, a lot of people have no idea that their salt intake is way too high. You’re right that the salt tends to come from processed foods, but the salt is still a probl…

To be fair, that says "a grain of truth", and that's contained within a section entitled: "Myth 6: Salt is bad for you". The summary says: But a drastic decrease in salt intake has not shown uniform benefit in clinical trials. Most people will benefit more from a diet of mostly unprocessed foods than from micromanaging their salt intake. As an example, salt-sensitive hypertension is a condition which some people have…

There are some interesting points in this podcast and related resources/sources (not a fan of all of this site’s content, though Gregor is good at compiling research):

https://nutritionfacts.org/audio/the-sodium-debate/

My take away from this and other sources is that we don’t have proper long-term, randomized, human trials to determine exactly what to say about this. At the same time, there are cases where a reduction is clearly helpful but no typical cases where an increase is beneficial.

I’m certainly not out to debate or disprove you here — I’d really like to eat more salt, but the evidence I come across doesn’t justify it. I’d rather be wrong, though.

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

#178

Post by mulmen »

insaider wrote: post #176
mulmen wrote: post #161

This article is mostly cliche popsci trash that isn’t worth reading. Good for a game of logical fallacy bingo. The only interesting development seems to be the methodology but that only gets a passing mention. The rest is basically fearmongering. > In humans, for example, gut bacteria influence how the immune system responds to pathogens and allergens, or interact with the brain, affecting mood. Ok. But what does tha…

Sounds like you're fighting confirmation bias with confirmation bias. Your points are valid, don't get me wrong, but there is also a lot of research causally linking microbiome deficiencies with various health problems. Also worth noting your shots seem more aimed at the journalist's style than the researcher's work. I for one, think this is super valuable and promising research

> Your points are valid, don't get me wrong, but there is also a lot of research causally linking microbiome deficiencies with various health problems.

I’m sure there is. But it isn’t in this article. So reading this to learn about it is a waste of time.

> Also worth noting your shots seem more aimed at the journalist's style than the researcher's work.

That’s a correct assessment, yes.

> I for one, think this is super valuable and promising research

A good source for that conclusion may exist, but this isn’t it.

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

#179

Post by bardworx »

ssnistfajen wrote: post #149
asdff wrote: post #45

Pretty 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…

Lactase persistence is regulated by genetic mutations, not gut microbes. The negative symptoms of lactose intolerance is exactly due to lactose being able to reach the gut and making the microbes there flourish by digesting lactose, creating large quantities of gas and other metabolic byproducts that cause flatulence, diarrhea, etc. People don't spontaneously become lactose intolerant just because they stopped eating…

Honest question: I grew up on a farm in former USSR. We milked cows daily, when I was a kid. Back then, I never knew about lactose intolerance but to be fair, this wasn’t a topic discussed.

Considering I know nothing about this, and you seem like you do, are there any studies that looked at links between lactose intolerance and fresh milk produce?

Reason I say “fresh” is because we never refrigerated the milk. In the morning you get milk, cream is taken off top, by next morning you have a kefir like drink. All was consumed. There was no processing.

I know there is a study[0] that link exposure to farm animals being linked to less allergic reactions but never seen anything about milk.

[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7744242/

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

#180

Post by makeitdouble »

lbeltrame wrote: post #4

About ten years ago my former PI (second author in the below paper) did quite a job on this in Burkina Faso, analyzing the composition of the gut in children living outside cities, in cities, and a comparison with European children. Obligatory disclaimer: I was working in his laboratory at the time, but I wasn't involved in that research. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1005963107

> indicating the importance of preserving this treasure of microbial diversity from ancient rural communities worldwide

This study (and the FA) mention losing/presrving microbial diversity, but don't touch on how we got these microbes in the first place.

I was expecting it comes mostly from what we eat and the environment, including eventually the people around us (and the mother - baby link ?)

I kinda wondered if we hadn't lost these microbes because they disappeared from our surroundings, and we'd get them back if they became prominent again, making the (temporary?) loss less impacting.

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