I know that antibiotics are a significant factor in the loss of gut bacteria, but another factor is all of the preservatives that pervade the manufactured food most people eat every day. I've often wondered what percentage of the loss is from these substances.
Mix of Bacteria in Gut May Depend More on Diet Than Genes
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Re: Mix of Bacteria in Gut May Depend More on Diet Than Genes
#42Can someone speak to my theory (that's based on limited knowledge), that if we wanted to "reset" the gut, we could deliberately take antibiotics to wipe out good/bad colonies of microbes and tailor a hyper-specific diet for sought after results. The hypothesis being that if certain microbes flourish for years and that if it is impractical to genetically map the gut biome to identify which are thriving in every patien…
There is a book called "Seeing like a state" http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/dp...
In it, the author tells a story of someone in a village in a less developed country who cannot afford pesticides. So he starts a war between two ant colonies in order to drive out the ants that are destroying a beloved fruit tree.
You can do the same thing for gut flora. You don't have to wipe things out first. Trying to wipe the gut clean is extremely hard on the body. It's much easier on the body to just feed the good flora and give them support so they start crowding out things you don't want. It's a gentler path. It just takes persistence.
Re: Mix of Bacteria in Gut May Depend More on Diet Than Genes
#43We're slowly coming to understand that antibiotics are very unkind to our gut flora and are a prime suspect in subsequent weight gain. Post-antibiotic diet could be a critical intervention to keep patients from falling into the grasp of obesity. A NY Times article earlier this year gives a background on how the rise of antibiotics has been accompanied by a rise in weight among animals and humans alike: http://www.nyt…
Cipro did wonders on my intestinal tract, effectively killing everything including the good. Had nine days of that to fight an under the skin infection/etc. Months after I started having problems with food, restrooms were becoming my second home and my commute was planned around easy access to them. You never want to experience life where one bit of food can send you off. Six doctor visits, stool and blood tests late…
>Six doctor visits, stool and blood tests later, the doctors found what moved in.
Something other than C. Diff? Would you mind sharing what it was?
Re: Mix of Bacteria in Gut May Depend More on Diet Than Genes
#44So do we know yet what sort of diet cultivates a microflora biome that encourages healthy weight loss? I'm asking for a friend... It's easy to find diets for losing weight in general, but I'm curious if we know enough to create a diet to make a microflora composition that can help the weight loss process along. I keep seeing mentions of the microflora factor influencing weight gain, so I'm assuming there's a way to c…
Turnbaugh was also an author on http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7122/abs/nature05...
(looking at parts of that question on mice)
and also on:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21543530
(looking at parts of that questions on humans).
The answer in humans does not quite match the answer in mice so far. Possible reasons to explain this discrepancy : might be the lack of a large enough group to study, or a local variation in the groups that does not generalize to mice.
Re: Mix of Bacteria in Gut May Depend More on Diet Than Genes
#45Ask like this: Is it a mere coincidence that so many of poorest tropical and subtropical (hot and humid climate) populations traditionally use highly spiced food? Does it strictly a tradition of making a "poor" food taste hot, or there is a connection with bacteria population?
Re: Mix of Bacteria in Gut May Depend More on Diet Than Genes
#46We're slowly coming to understand that antibiotics are very unkind to our gut flora and are a prime suspect in subsequent weight gain. Post-antibiotic diet could be a critical intervention to keep patients from falling into the grasp of obesity. A NY Times article earlier this year gives a background on how the rise of antibiotics has been accompanied by a rise in weight among animals and humans alike: http://www.nyt…
If you look at your JAMA article, you'll see that the connection between antibiotic use and childhood obesity is pretty small. My question would be, we've had broad-spectrum antibiotics around since WW2 (broad spectrum being the one the paper flags), yet obesity is a relatively recent phenomenon.
Also, they also found a connection between obesity and "Steroid use, male sex, urban practice, public insurance, Hispanic ethnicity, and diagnosed asthma or wheezing were also predictors of obesity; common infectious diagnoses and antireflux medications were not."
Re: Mix of Bacteria in Gut May Depend More on Diet Than Genes
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, which adds to the argument that so called "mental" health problems are not actually mental. Many diseases cause some mental symptoms and get wrongly labelled as mental illnesses, when I dispute that there is such a thing.
You dispute that mental illness is a thing that exists?
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Re: Mix of Bacteria in Gut May Depend More on Diet Than Genes
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is known that the reliability of psychiatric diagnoses is non-existent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment Edit: It is ok to downvote if you disagree. But think what it says about you if you are downvoting facts .
That links to an experiment that -proves- suggests it's possible to game psychiatric diagnosis, not that mental illness doesn't exist. edit: btw the way, I've been here for like 5 years now and I still don't know what flavor of Markdown is used here.
Linked from the FAQ at the bottom of the page: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
Re: Mix of Bacteria in Gut May Depend More on Diet Than Genes
#49Given the evident link between gut bacteria and mental health, it may be that we'll see diet as a component of psychiatric care in the future. ( http://www.nature.com/news/gut-brain-link-grabs-neuroscienti... )
We should . Sadly, it's hard to administer, and harder to make money off of.
If somatopsychic medicine ever becomes a thing, I imagine it will not be called "psychiatry." And someone will figure out how to monetize it.
Re: Mix of Bacteria in Gut May Depend More on Diet Than Genes
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
You dispute that mental illness is a thing that exists?
It is known that the reliability of psychiatric diagnoses is non-existent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment Edit: It is ok to downvote if you disagree. But think what it says about you if you are downvoting facts .
> But think what it says about you if you are downvoting facts.
You posted something from 40 years ago.