61–70 of 71 posts
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I'm curious: I've always suspected 'probiotics' are ineffective, like scattering a few daffodil seeds into a field of weeds. Either not a significant quantity to compete, or just 'food for bugs' which feeds everything indiscriminately.
as someone with plenty of gastrointestinal issues, probiotics are a godsend
There's a lot of criticism around people that self-experiment or self-diagnose, and it is indeed a potentially very dangerous practice, but the expense and fallibility of doctors can sometimes leave little alternative.
One example of this is Nicholas C. Zakas's recent account[1] of his discovery that he is afflicted by Lyme disease, has had it for the last 15 years, and was frequently misdiagnosed with everything from depression to having an eating disorder.
The point is, regardless of education, nobody cares as much about your health as you do. Doctors deal with hundreds of patients, you get to focus on just one.
[1] http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2014/04/02/i-have-lyme-disease...
I work with a major researcher in FMT and actually act as a donor so I know a little about this. Patients receiving FMT typically receive a short course of vancomycin to rid the gut of bacteria (or as much as possible). It's like starting with a clean slate. Your gut is then more readily able to accept the donation. Without the vanco (or other abx) you are basically just throwing shit at more shit and hoping it sticks.
I think your results would really change if you had done this through a doctor and had a bit of abx prior to FMT (or even just an enema).
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as someone with plenty of gastrointestinal issues, probiotics are a godsend
curious to know if you have ever done a double blind test to determine if it's just a placebo effect?
Is this satire? Did he really have a friend poop into his butt on whim?
FMT is at least a real process, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal_bacteriotherapy . I don't think you quite captured how it's done in practice, though.
The difference is well within the variation you'd expect from multiple samples, extraction, PCR, sequencing, day-to-day. Also, you're probably better off trying to alter your gut microbiome through ingestion of probiotics. Source: I am a PhD student research the human gut microbiome in connection with autoimmunity and have processed thousands of these samples using the exact same methodology as uBiome.
Do we know specific pro-biotic species that have been found to be significantly more beneficial than the rest? How do we know? Does "pro-biotic" refer only to beneficial prokaryotic organisms or are there known beneficial "pro-biotic" foreign eukaryotes?
This is probably an unpopular opinion but it seems to me that "SV culture" has taken to fetishizing "health hacking" with little to no medical training/background or support. See the recent SV craze with "health informatics hacking". They're putting a shiny, appealing veneer over what amounts to homeopathy and random self-experimentation. Someone is going to say, "but they have all this data, like this guy from µBiom…
[1] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Polishing%20a...
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>They're putting a shiny, appealing veneer over what amounts to homeopathy How is self experimentation equivalent to homeopathy? I don't get how giving a shit about your own health is equated so quickly with a specific nonsensical, pseudoscientific sham.
This may not be, but things like Soylent which claim to solve all your nutritional and health needs by drinking it, are the equivalent of homeopathy -- like say, drinking g tea made from the horn of rhino will make your virile.
(Which is not my support of homeopathy - it's just that using the right term is important for discourse. It's important to distinguish between copyright infringement and theft, and it is important to distinguish between different forms of alternative -- that is, not scientifically proven -- medicine).
Is this satire? Did he really have a friend poop into his butt on whim?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do we know specific pro-biotic species that have been found to be significantly more beneficial than the rest? How do we know? Does "pro-biotic" refer only to beneficial prokaryotic organisms or are there known beneficial "pro-biotic" foreign eukaryotes?
There are some eukaryotes, yes, e.g. Saccharomyces boulardii.