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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

#61

Post by prometheus76 »

seraphsf wrote: post #56
prometheus76 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I know a person who contracted a transient parasite infection, possibly hookworm, while doing research in Africa and walking around barefoot. In the decade+ since, they’ve suffered terribly from debilitating and incurable auto-immune diseases brought on by the initial parasite infection. So, YMMV.

I agree that caution is in order. The question above just reminded me of the story so I thought I'd pass it along because it was from 2012.

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

#62

Post by steve_adams_86 »

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…

One tricky part with fermented foods is that the salty ones appear to increase rates of colon and stomach cancer as I recall.

I read something years ago about how as the Japanese population adapted a more western diet, heaps of ailments came upon them as you’d expect, but their salt intake declined so dramatically that they stopped experiencing stroke and GI tract cancers nearly as much.

I think you’d need to pin down just how much salt was causing those issues though and then ask if the benefits of the salty fermented foods outweigh the current problem of having depleted gut microbiomes and atrocious diets.

So, I’m certainly not suggesting everyone avoid salty fermented foods. I eat (and make) a fair amount myself and as I alluded above, I suspect it’s better for me than eating food that is, on balance, worse for me.

There’s no perfect diet, but there are clearly worse diets. I try to avoid the latter.

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

#63

Post by 0bfus »

wheelerof4te wrote: post #41

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.

> 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.

Can't find it for meat in general, but it seems that rural areas eat significantly more beef than suburban or urban dwellers.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/outlooks/37388/29633_ldpm13....

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

#64

Post by jstanley »

jascii wrote: post #13
goatcode wrote: post #5

>people in U.S. cities...people in less developed parts of the world What about people in the US who are not in cities? That's the more interesting comparison to me. Why would that be left out?

I'm curious why that comparison is more interesting to you? I can see great value in having both data points when trying to formulate a hypothesis about what causes the decline in gut-microbes in us city folks, but I find it hard to think of a use-case for solely a urban/rural comparison without other context. (Update: I was thinking about this from a scientific perspective, ignoring the idea that people might be int…

Even from a scientific perspective, it would be more interesting to see the effect of each variable independently (cities vs rural, US vs somewhere else) rather than bundling them together.

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

#65

Post by feet »

aluminussoma wrote: post #52
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

How does one analyze the gut biome? I imagine it involves running poop through a machine - what kind of machine? I would love to learn more about the technical process.

Most likely extracting and culturing then PCR

Edit: grabbed from the methods section. I was wrong, they didn't culture :)

>Fecal samples were collected by physicians and preserved in RNAlater (Qiagen) at −80 °C until extraction of genomic DNA (28) (details in SI Materials and Methods).

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

#67

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

kaycebasques wrote: post #66

I had to use oral antibiotics about a year ago for reasons that could have been avoided. I was pretty upset about it precisely because it probably wreaked havoc on all the beneficial gut microbes that I had built up over the years.

I had a couple courses of IV antibiotics to fight a severe tooth infection. All the oral surgeons who came in to check on me recommended picking up a few bottles of probiotic drinks on my way home.

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

#68

Post by f38zf5vdt »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #62
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…

One tricky part with fermented foods is that the salty ones appear to increase rates of colon and stomach cancer as I recall. I read something years ago about how as the Japanese population adapted a more western diet, heaps of ailments came upon them as you’d expect, but their salt intake declined so dramatically that they stopped experiencing stroke and GI tract cancers nearly as much. I think you’d need to pin dow…

Seems unlikely. A lot of the traditional West African diet is fermented and they have the lowest rates of colon cancer on Earth. Smoked foods and foods containing nitrates/nitrates are correlated with stomach and colon cancer, but not salty or fermented foods. Studies that show a correlation of salt intake with cancer are very possibly confusing intake of smoked meat or processed meat (also high in salt) with colon cancer. For example, when adjusting for processed meat, one study finds that salt is not correlated at all with colon cancer. [1]

[1] https://www.clinicalnutritionjournal.com/article/S0261-5614(...

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

#69

Post by woodruffw »

goatcode wrote: post #5

>people in U.S. cities...people in less developed parts of the world What about people in the US who are not in cities? That's the more interesting comparison to me. Why would that be left out?

> What about people in the US who are not in cities? That's the more interesting comparison to me. Why would that be left out?

At least in the US, my lay-intuition is that you wouldn't see much of a difference between average Americans between urban, suburban, and rural settings. That's perhaps worth testing, but I think the much more interesting test would be between wealth and class groups.

(Again, wild speculation: it's easy to imagine that most gut biota don't care about the difference between dollar-store knockoff sodas and brand-name sodas, but definitely do care about $14 free-range, organic eggs.)

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

#70

Post by Terry_Roll »

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…

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