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Oral microbiome sequencing after taking probiotics

blog.booleanbiotech.com

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Re: Oral microbiome sequencing after taking probiotics

#71

Post by a_conservative »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #5

Only tangentially relevant, but I’ve dealt with mouth and gut microbiome issues my whole life, the latter exacerbated by a strong antibiotic I had to go on in mid 2017 for a super resistant staph infection. L Reuteri supplementation and “L Reuteri yogurt” was one of those alternative methods I read about (though I’m skeptical that reuteri is the dominant strain in this “yogurt”) Doctors don’t really care to look at t…

Not a doctor either.

Japan seems to love creating fat soluble forms of thiamine. I've been experimenting with a form of thiamine called TTFD. TTFD is synthetic, there's a natural form called allithiamine, derived from garlic. There's also another form called benfotiamine. All of these are fat soluble and highly highly available forms of thiamine. TTFD in particular is associated with paradoxical effects where a person can have a temporary worsening of thiamine deficiency symptoms when first consuming TTFD. Thiamine is generally considered very safe, but these supplements are pretty hefty doses, so I would suggest treading lightly.

There's also some thinking amongst some doctors that sub-clinical thiamine deficiencies being more common than most doctors realize [0] [1]

[0] Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/chapter/monograph/pii/...

Re: Oral microbiome sequencing after taking probiotics

#72

Post by tonyarkles »

thom wrote: post #66
throwoutway wrote: post #9

I would love to see this same analysis with a gut probiotic! I am never convinced if I'm wasting my money, which strains are best, should I do refrigerated or shelf-stable, etc.

Anecdata/placebo/whatever: I use BioGaia's Gastrus tablets and they increase my quality of life noticeably, and I can tell when I've been off them for a while. I got refrigerated deliveries of probiotic yoghurt drinks for a while previously and in addition to the faff, didn't notice as good results.

Additional Anecdata: I head about BioGaia's Gastrus tablets here on HN a couple of years ago and they have dramatically improved my wife's quality of life as well. She suffered from significant GI problems. We bought a pack of the BioGaia tablets based on an anecdote here. Within about 3 weeks her year-long GI problems were gone. She discontinued the tablets and the GI issues stayed away. About 18 months later, after a period of heavy stress and travel, her GI issues returned and then disappeared again after another round of BioGaia tablets.

Re: Oral microbiome sequencing after taking probiotics

#73

Post by xattt »

cwnyth wrote: post #52
xattt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> doctor =/= expert on probiotics Medical microbiologists would love to have a word with you. Medicine and medicine-adjacent disciplines each develop institutional knowledge that percolates from each specialized discipline. > …the research on probiotics is still very much in its infancy and a LOT remains to be figured out. I’m curious who you think does the research. It’s certainly not Bubba from down the creek.

PhDs do the research. Not your typical overworked family practitioner.

They don’t develop treatment protocols or testing modalities either. Knowledge gets disseminated as best practices and gets applied as needed to different specialties.

If probiotics is what you’re after, why not eat or drink something fermented?

Re: Oral microbiome sequencing after taking probiotics

#74

Post by chasebank »

ahstilde wrote: post #53
bzmrgonz wrote: post #18

I want this for nasal microbiome. I think modern living is wreaking havoc on our upper respiratory track. We need to find a way to regenerate or improve nasal cavity microbiome.

I think your best bet is first curing your allergies. That's what I've been working on for 5 years: www.wyndly.com

how do you test for allergens? i did 5 years of immunotherapy shots, twice weekly at a doctors office and i had to stay 30 minutes after each shot for the anaphylaxis risk. it worked quite well but it was really inconvenient.

Re: Oral microbiome sequencing after taking probiotics

#75

Post by echelon »

vibrio wrote: post #41
OutOfHere wrote: post #12

Wasn't there recently a discussion of a risk of methanol formation from an ethanol producing strain? I sure hope that none of your strains produce ethanol.

Slightly different point but many bacteria in us right now also make lipopolysaccharide (LPS). If it were purified and injected iv, the LPS in me could probably kill me 1000 x over.

LPS is a critical component of gram negative bacteria, like E. coli.

We evolved LPS detection so long ago that it's in our innate immune system instead of adaptive immunity. It's so ancient we share this immune function with fruit flies.

LPS detection is so good and immediate because it's tuned to pick up single instances of LPS molecules. Not a few nmol. Single molecules. Detection will trigger inflammation and immune scale up to deal with the problem.

If you go injecting LPS or E coli into your blood stream, of course your own body is going to kill you. It'll freak out and think WW III has started and begin firing the nukes in every direction to stop it.

This is septic shock.

Re: Oral microbiome sequencing after taking probiotics

#76

Post by davio »

anjel wrote: post #35
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #10

PSA: If a probiotic is on the shelf, not in a cooler, it's probably not worth buying. The best companies certify the count of organisms at time of manufacture , but no counts are guaranteed at the shelf. Probiotics are living organisms and ought to be refrigerated for max lifespan. You can get refrigerated probiotic supps at a place like Whole Foods. Source: I used to work in the industry.

They sell a yogurt starter that is purportedly Salivarius and ruteirii culture over at Beazos' Clubhouse. I haven't had it tested but it's way easier than the usual Bulgarian microbes. Assuming the cultures are as labeled, I have to imagine eating live culture yogurt is more likely to propogate than loszenges made in a factory though.

I've made the L. reuteri "yogurt" from the BioGaia Gastrus tablets from amazon and it works well. First batch is a little watery but after that it pretty much looks like greek yogurt when I use half and half.

Re: Oral microbiome sequencing after taking probiotics

#77

Post by curl-up »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #10

PSA: If a probiotic is on the shelf, not in a cooler, it's probably not worth buying. The best companies certify the count of organisms at time of manufacture , but no counts are guaranteed at the shelf. Probiotics are living organisms and ought to be refrigerated for max lifespan. You can get refrigerated probiotic supps at a place like Whole Foods. Source: I used to work in the industry.

A very naive question: why are "dry and on the shelf" not worth buying, when so many of the food-related microorganisms obviously work fine through such distribution (baking yeasts, various yogurt starters, cheese molds, etc.)?

Re: Oral microbiome sequencing after taking probiotics

#78

Post by justinclift »

zamadatix wrote: post #42
refulgentis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ and not to try to keep even the shelf-stable ones above room temperature.” - hate to ask, but night brain kicked in - could I trouble you to give me an alternative way of phrasing this? I keep parsing it as “don’t even bother trying to keep probiotics warm”

No night brain, just a good splice on my part after editing that sentence down :). stavros has a great rewrite already, but an even more succinct one for just the particular snippet could be: "even shelf-stable probiotics should not be kept above room temperature".

"room temperature" has a whole lot of variation without even thinking about the extremes of population location. :(

Re: Oral microbiome sequencing after taking probiotics

#79

Post by michael1999 »

curl-up wrote: post #77
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #10

PSA: If a probiotic is on the shelf, not in a cooler, it's probably not worth buying. The best companies certify the count of organisms at time of manufacture , but no counts are guaranteed at the shelf. Probiotics are living organisms and ought to be refrigerated for max lifespan. You can get refrigerated probiotic supps at a place like Whole Foods. Source: I used to work in the industry.

A very naive question: why are "dry and on the shelf" not worth buying, when so many of the food-related microorganisms obviously work fine through such distribution (baking yeasts, various yogurt starters, cheese molds, etc.)?

Yeasts and fungi produce durable spores. But most gut bacteria do not form spores. When they dry out, they die.

Re: Oral microbiome sequencing after taking probiotics

#80

Post by mlmonkey »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #10

PSA: If a probiotic is on the shelf, not in a cooler, it's probably not worth buying. The best companies certify the count of organisms at time of manufacture , but no counts are guaranteed at the shelf. Probiotics are living organisms and ought to be refrigerated for max lifespan. You can get refrigerated probiotic supps at a place like Whole Foods. Source: I used to work in the industry.

Why not run an experiment like this post: take a probiotic capsule, put its contents in a growing medium; after a day or two, sample from the medium and send it in for testing, and see which strains actually grew?
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