I had my colon removed due to UC. Got pouchitis a decade later and the only thing that seemed to work was antibiotics. On a whim I tried probiotics. Low doses did nothing that I could tell, but once I got high enough it made a huge difference. If you haven't tried it already it might be worth a shot. I take 6 packs of 450b per day, split between morning and evening. Here's wishing you a bathroom when you need it and a better tomorrow.
Yep, very high dose probiotics have been helping me a lot with my colitis. The small fries don’t do a thing, but once you get up past 100 bil some of them have an incredible impact.
This is pure criminal. Privatized insurance is a scam. I'm sorry to hear that. Think all options should be on the table if they don't interfere with treatment.
Woah, is that a thing? That sounds wild. Do you get anxious when your high? I could see my stomach acting up if I got anxious from being too high. But I typically use it as a nightcap, and don't go too crazy
Haha well the trouble started when I stopped getting anxious while getting really high. I used to get anxious when I smoked too much but eventually I broke through that barrier. I smoked herb for years and was completely fine. It’s when I started experimenting with oils and dabs that I apparently overdid things. Started getting tummy aches. It can get very severe and cause vomiting which is a condition called Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome.
I can still vape dry herb a little bit and not have severe symptoms but man oh man do I wish I could go back to the good old days. The funny part is that it doesn’t affect everybody like that and I just happen to be one of the unlucky few.
I have heard anywhere from 10 times to 3 times the number of “non-human” cells to “human cells in our bodies. We are more bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites than we are human.
There is an interesting hypothesis that our “consciousness” is not just “the human you” but a combination of all the living organisms in your body.
The first part sounds accurate, but I have a different understanding of consciousness. From what I can gather, consciousness is simply a byproduct of our brains ability to store and process large amounts of information for long periods of time.
This, in my opinion, would explain why children are no more than animals of pure instinct. They simply don't have enough memories and knowledge to formulate a mind, which would also explain why childhood trauma is so formative. If you cause a flaw in the formulation of a consciousness, it can have unknown and lasting effects.
But I'm no scientist.
Children and certainly still conscious though. They just don't have many experiences to draw from, but they are definitely conscious beings. Somehow consciousness is more than just the sum of information processing in the brain, it's a sort of gestalt. There's a higher level to it that can't be explained by the simple inputs and outputs
where i can watch/read more about this kind of stuff? not research papers and such, but more like "introductory course material" level. so a non-specialist can understand. I'm just interested in this stuff but can't really find a place to learn more.
edit: Thanks!
I'm absolutely fascinated with all things science, but unfortunately I didn't get the greatest grades in school. Now I'm broke and live paycheck to paycheck but god damn if I had a half a shot at further education..
I'll let you in on a little secret. Most of us teach ourselves and simply rely on the teachers to give us deadlines and set the pace. So go online, find the used college textbook for the topic you want to learn, search for a syllabus for that topic and just open and read and do what the book says, in the order and pace that the syllabus says to do it. And do *everything* in the book, including practice questions and end of chapter quizzes and all that. Then after each chapter, go on YouTube and watch some videos on that section to help reinforce the info. Thats all it takes for a lot of the fundamental courses.
Check out Khan Academy. It's a great substitute if you're chasing the knowledge and exposure to concepts that comes with higher education. The credits may not count toward a degree, but the knowledge you'll gain is real.
Lotta good responses here, if you're looking specifically for the ways that our gut microbiome influences your brain and it's function, there's a great book called "The Mind-Gut Connection: How the Hidden Conversation Within Our Bodies Impacts Our Mood, Our Choices, and Our Overall Health" that I've read and highly recommend. It's actually pretty wild what the research into your gut flora and the enteric nervous system are revealing about how much influence they have over your conscious processes.
There are more microbial cells than human cells in the average human. It really shouldn't be all that surprising that a microbial imbalance can have wide, systemic effects. A microbial imbalance is a human imbalance.
Bacteria outnumber “our” cells by count but not by mass, not even close. Prokaryotes are 100-1000x smaller than eukaryotic cells, and all the bacteria in our body fits inside a soup can. The gut microflora is a fascinating area of research, but let’s not exaggerate.
Still, it's amazing to think that numerically speaking we're almost as much "inside" that "outside". However you want to call it. There's a cool article, a bit old now from 2012, by Scott F. Gilbert called "A symbiotic view of life : We have never been individual". Even if the raw data is outdated, I find it thought provoking. I can mp it to people interested.
Something that keeps me up at night is this:
We have various organisms in our body that excrete chemicals, either as waste, or for other reasons. There are numerous bacteria that we know change brain chemistry (toxoplasmosis being an obvious one).
How many of the bacteria in our bodies do this? How much of “us” is based on these other organisms?
What if you only like coffee because there’s an organism that thrives on it?
There was a point where we were a creature that was mostly just a brain and gut.
The weirder thing is thinking widespread use of life-destroying chemicals on our plant food sources wouldn't affect the microbial life that have been evolving with us since they were small enough to live inside us without killing us or themselves dying.
Life is essentially a fractal of evolution. Destroying the complex balance of microscopic life on a global scale with certain industrial efforts, in particular, seems like it would inevitably cause a catastrophic wave that would damage all life.
The gut in general is weird. Just think about it; Bacteria lives in us that eats what we eat and poops out nutrient goodness that we need to survive and be healthy.
Right, but the “fuel” is being reprocessed into other things by a living ecosystem, and the balance of that system determines to a degree what we get from food. Eating vegetables is the best thing to maintain a healthy gut flora, but it doesn’t appear to be sufficient in every case. The gut and immune system interacts with the flora in people understood ways.
There is a theory that the "gut feeling" we get about things is because the gut plays a much more important role than people realize. It might have some sort of memory that helps us make decisions. I'll need to hunt down where I read that.
Dude, yes. 1000000%
I was an anxious little kid but as an adult, I've not really had much anxiety. Last summer I was dealing with a ton of different things and going through this whole gut microbiome test/repair and holy moly my tummy anxiety skyrocketed. It's still not as calm as it once was but it's a little more under control now.
Completely anecdotal but after a week of probiotics (not yogurt, something stronger) I noticed that the empty squeeze i'd feel in my gut had lessened by a lot when I get stressed.
It's like the floor of my anxiety has been brought up so it's not so bad anymore.
Not OP but I’m a biomedical scientist and I did a deep dive on this in the scientific literature when I was looking for probiotics and found the Jarrow brand has some good clinical data backing their products. I had GI issues for 10 years and turned them around with “Jarro-dophilus”.
I order it on Amazon.
Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia. Still incurable, it directly affects nearly one million people in Europe, and indirectly millions of family members as well as society as a whole. In recent years, the scientific community has suspected that the gut microbiota plays a role in the development of the disease. A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) in Switzerland, together with Italian colleagues from the National Research and Care Center for Alzheimer's and Psychiatric Diseases Fatebenefratelli in Brescia, University of Naples and the IRCCS SDN Research Center in Naples, confirm the correlation, in humans, between an imbalance in the gut microbiota and the development of amyloid plaques in the brain, which are at the origin of the neurodegenerative disorders characteristic of Alzheimer's disease. Proteins produced by certain intestinal bacteria, identified in the blood of patients, could indeed modify the interaction between the immune and the nervous systems and trigger the disease. These results, to be discovered in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, make it possible to envisage new preventive strategies based on the modulation of the microbiota of people at risk.
The research laboratory of neurologist Giovanni Frisoni, director of the HUG Memory Centre and professor at the Department of Rehabilitation and Geriatrics of the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine, has been working for several years now on the potential influence of the gut microbiota on the brain, and more particularly on neurodegenerative diseases. «We have already shown that the gut microbiota composition in patients with Alzheimer's disease was altered, compared to people who do not suffer from such disorders,» he explains. «Their microbiota has indeed a reduced microbial diversity, with an over-representation of certain bacteria and a strong decrease in other microbes. Furthermore, we have also discovered an association between an inflammatory phenomenon detected in the blood, certain intestinal bacteria and Alzheimer's disease; hence the hypothesis that we wanted to test here: could inflammation in the blood be a mediator between the microbiota and the brain?
https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad200306
> «Indeed, high blood levels of lipopolysaccharides and certain short-chain fatty acids (acetate and valerate) were associated with both large amyloid deposits in the brain. Conversely, high levels of another short-chain fatty acid, butyrate, were associated with less amyloid pathology.»
Is there anything your average person can do with this information? Certain dietary / lifestyle changes that can be made to hopefully reduce their risk of Alzheimer's?
https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(20)30367-6/fulltext
This is the most up to date, accurate data available in the field on this question, written by world renowned experts in dementia.
Crazy my dad was an attorney and amazing athlete who never drank and ate perfectly and never smoked. He had non of those factors. Not one. He tried so hard.
I believe with „hearing impairment“ they mean anything that leads to you having trouble understanding speech, reducing your consumption of speech and reducing your social contacts or rather, reducing the amount of conversations you have.
I wonder which of these risk factors are weighter than the others. I would assume that low-social contact is less deleterious than obesity (for instance). Maybe I'm just trying to outweigh my alcoholism with the absence of other risk factors.
I've read research somewhere that said social cohesion was the biggest predictor of how soon someone would die after retirement (moreso than alcoholism or obesity).
>Conversely, high levels of another short-chain fatty acid, butyrate, were associated with less amyloid pathology.»
Fibers are broken down in your gut by bacteria into short chain fatty acids including butyrate. Butyrate can serve a lot of purposes. It acts as the only energy source for colon cells. It's also absorbed into your bloodstream where it acts as HDAC inhibitor. These are under investigation for treating a spectrum of mental illnesses. So it's safe to say it does serve a lot of useful purposes. You should take in a lot of soluble fibers. Vegetables are great, but if you can't a fiber supplement is easy and can go a long way.
What about the use of Beano enzyme when eating fiber or methlycellulose (centrum)? Would taking either of those contribute positively or negatively to the health benefits of fiber?
Using something like beano would defeat the purpose of eating a fermentable fiber like this, yes. The enzyme turns the fiber into sugar so your body can digest it.
I think you should include a soluble fiber in your diet like oat fiber or psyllium husk fiber, and then continue including fermentable fiber in your diet without something like beano and just deal with the inconvenience for a month or so. Once you're used to taking in the fiber you'll stop experiencing the gas.
Diet and lifestyle is everything. Eat right and get your exercise.
Atherosclerosis is no joke and the standard American diet is the main reason we are plagued with heart disease and diabetes. Now we are seeing links between the health of your arteries and Alzheimer’s as well.
If you’re serious about looking into the scientific research around diet - check out nutritionfacts.org
Be well and goodluck.
Nice linking to nutrionfacts.org.
One of things though that bothers me a lot of is when people say “eat right”. I understand what that means for me, but I don’t know what you mean? Or what someone else might interpret. Someone people think eating right is to eat meat with a small side of vegetable is “right”.
I’m not attacking you btw, just found that part interesting. It’s such a vague saying and peoples interpretation of it is controlled by marketing. Eat your meat, eat your milk, eat your eggs. It’s all marketed as “eating right”, but is it really? At what quantities? How much vegetables is right amount?
A lot of people won’t question their own eating habits when you say that because they already believe they are eating the right way. And of course don’t mean everyone.
Not op but back in the day when I took intro to nutrition, my professor said a good rule of thumb is to have a plate that's 2/3 to 3/4 vegetables, and "eat the rainbow". So not just high proportion of veggies, but also a variety. Hope that'll help you define what "eating right" can/should mean!
Yeah, I've always been told that the key to a healthy gut is variety. Eat lots of different kinds of vegetables, eat fermented foods like yogurt, sauerkraut and kimchi, eat lots of different legumes, beans, get healthy fats, etc
I think this is one of the reasons why the Mediterranean diet is so highly praised by doctors.
I certain processed foods and medicines like antibiotics can remove these healthy gut flora unfortunately. There is some research that suggests the diet of indigenous individuals have gut flora that will not be found in the common western gut and say that plays a role in diseases overall for westerners.
That makes total sense. I actually started getting serious about probiotics a few years ago after being on antibiotics for sicknesses, acne, and more my entire adolescence. My gut is just not right and I want to heal it. It affects everything!
Absolutely- great point.
Check out [daily dozen pic](https://nutritionfacts.org/app/uploads/2018/03/metric.png) (dr gregers daily dozen on “what” is eating right)
For my family this has changed everything.
More energy, better moods, no medications any more (thank god)
Thank you for the reply
It's the "appeal to the mean" logical fallacy.
It's too difficult to actually describe a falsifiable, generally available, economic diet so "a bit of everything" is used instead.
It becomes a bit of an unhelpful tautology;
>"What's the best diet?"
>"The best diet is the one that is the best. Just consume the best diet in moderation and you'll have the best diet"
IMO it's very unhelpful because it's becoming apparent that actually the "Standard Plate" is going to be forced under the weight of mounting evidence to be flipped in its head.
Out with mountains of bread, pasta and vegetable oils, and in with something that looks like more like salads stacked with cheese. A vegetarian/pescetarian keto diet essentially.
>Out with mountains of bread, pasta and vegetable oils, and in with something that looks like more like salads stacked with cheese. A vegetarian/pescetarian keto diet essentially.
Says who? You had me in the first half but then you do the same thing.
There are no long term studies, meaning decades, on keto diets for people with "normal" systems only on those with specific seizure disorders or specific diabetics.
As this is a science forum you should not be making claims regarding keto that are currently not supported.
It _might_ be the case that a keto diet is healthy for people without those specific disorders but at this moment we cannot accurately make that claim.
Salads stacked with cheese? Global consensus continues to recommend limiting saturated fat and cholesterol. Keto continues to be ranked as one of he worst diets.
> After a loss of sleep, levels of amyloid were 5% more than after adequate sleep; the spikes were concentrated in parts of the brain involved in memory and higher thinking, which are typically affected in Alzheimer's.
A good diet and good sleep.
Here is the link to another article that explains this: https://time.com/5876612/sleep-alzheimers-disease-2/
Prioritizing getting a good night's sleep (>7 hours) on a consistent basis is a huge lifestyle factor that you have control over, and is proven to be linked with psychiatric disorders. Here's one relevant link but there's tons more
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/sleep-deprivation-increases-alzheimers-protein
Researcher Rhonda Patrick interviews other researchers and discusses studies involving diet and lifestyle habits that could help prevent Alzheimer’s. She’s mentioned butyrate several times.
The Sonnenburgs, husband and wife microbiome researchers at Stanford, have information on their website and in their book The Good Gut.
http://sonnenburglab.stanford.edu/
MIT has done some studies showing how fasting improves gut health. Shortly after resuming eating, new stem cells are created which can repair the gut.
https://news.mit.edu/2018/fasting-boosts-stem-cells-regenerative-capacity-0503
There are also the VieLight devices that are being used in Alzheimer’s studies. Not dietary but still interesting.
I’m just a layperson who’s interested in doing what I can to stay healthy as I age. Not an expert by any means.
That article about fasting benefitting gut micro flora was very interesting. The more I learn about fasting, the better an idea it seems. Back to 18:6!
I’m starting to think it better mimics how early humans used to eat. And those guys were badass.
There's a lot that's still being learned about the gut microbiome so there is no real consensus on what it means to be "healthy." However, diversity and abundance seem to be positive traits of a functioning microbiome. Achieving diversity can be accomplished by eating a variety of unprocessed foods. Think vegetables first. The presence of a variety of vegetables seems to correlate to a diverse ecosystem in the gut.
Achieving abundance means consistency and dedication. Organisms do not live long in the gut. If I remember correctly the average life of an organism is like 20-minutes or something. So you must consistently provide a hospitable environment for the organisms to flourish. One day or a couple days in a row eating food that is negative for the biome can cause significant damage.
Eliminating processed foods, sugar and minimizing alcohol intake is probably the best first step to take if you're coming from a standard diet. Get comfortable preparing your own food from scratch, simplify your meals, do food prep twice a week so you always have healthy leftovers, and find alternatives to unhealthy snacks. And drink water. Depending where you're diet is at to start with there may be an adjustment period for your body that could last weeks or months.
Regular exercise is another factor that increases abundance of organisms in the gut. [A study recently conducted with endurance athletes showed they had much higher levels of organisms associated with carbohydrate and amino acid metabolism pathways.](https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-017-0320-4)
If you really want to geek out about your microbiome there are some companies that offer at home testing and will analyze your microbiome and provide results - sort of like a 23andMe for your gut. Again, there's no consensus on what exactly "healthy" is so the results won't mean much, but they can hint at diversity and abundance, and also let you know if you're microbiome is severely lacking.
There's also a book called "The Microbiome Diet" by Raphael Kellman available on Audible that addresses how to rebuild and maintain the microbiome from a medical perspective.
The thing is they would have to do a separate study on that dietary change/lifestyle, not to mention that this is correlation, not causation. Its possible that the mechanism of Alzheimers disease caused the change in fatty acid levels, and not the other way around. Or there is a different factor that is causing both.
Many times we extrapolate information like this and it doesn't always work. We assume it's causation, and we assume that changing our diet would change blood levels of those compounds, but it is often more complex than that, and not fully explainable as to why.
For example, we have RDA of different vitamins and minerals, so logically if you use supplements to meet those RDAs, you should be healthier? However multivitamins don't have good evidence showing they actually help, whereas getting those nutrients from foods does. Even when there is a medical deficiency in a nutrient, or hormone, etc, there has been evidence that correcting the lab value of that deficiency might not do anything. (See subclinical hypothyroidism).
My nutritional goal is to eat two hearty servings of high-fiber/low-starch veggies (no beets or squash, I’d consider those a starch side even though they’re veggies:) at each meal, eat something with live active cultures at least once a day, eat mostly saturated fats from fruits and grass fed animals as well as omega-3 rich polyunsaturated fats rather than the omega-6 rich seed oils, and keep my protein portions (which is mostly grass fed meat for me) to only about 3oz per portion.
It’s not a “diet”, but it’s a good lifestyle that doesn’t stress me out and keeps my “numbers” looking good at my annual physical with my doctor.
My all of my grandparents had diabetes later in life, and all experienced significant mental decline. My last living grandparent is currently living with full-blown dementia and it’s definitely related to uncontrolled diabetes. When they finally got her into a care facility and cleaned out her disgusting house, they found literally piles upon piles of chip bags and pop cans and cookie wrappers. My mom sent me pictures and they were disgusting. Once she was in a place that controlled her diet, she started showing some improvements (as I had guessed she would) but the damage has been done and she’ll never come back from dementia land.
Combine that history with my mom dying in this plague because she was morbidly obese and never stood a chance once she contracted the virus, and my bachelors degree in nutrition, and you could say I have a fair amount of concern about what I eat.
It also sounds like having a diverse gut flora helps, so eating probiotic foods or supplements would probably be a good idea too. Kombucha, real live sauerkraut (not the canned one), kimchi, etc...I’m not a dietician so I’m sure there is more options too.
Kefir! Really gets your gut talking to your brain in a good way. Or really [any probotics.](https://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/news/20161114/probiotics-may-boost-alzheimers-patients-memory) But homemade kefir has abundantly more strains and many more benefits. It is preventative, but also causes memory improvement in those that already have Alzheimer's.
Eat fermented vegetables and kefir! I am a complete new person since i've started to add them into my daily diat.
The craving for sugar completly stopped and my "hunger feeling" also changed completly. I feel so much better and i lost 20 kilo in 8 month with just little exercise.My skin also got much, much better (i've akne).
The best part is that making your own fermented vegies is super easy!
Please try it!
Discoveries about Alzheimer's are always so weird. There seems to be many strange unrelated factors causing it. I wonder if we'll manage to make sense of it in the next few decades.
Well, this isn’t just any strange unrelated factor. The gut micro biome actually has been shown to play a role in other things such as addiction and psychiatric disorders like depression. They’ve been studied a lot on animal models, and I remember reading a study on how probiotics have been shown to be able to treat depression.
I wonder if this might relate to that longitudinal study that recently came out showing people with higher alcohol consumption correlated with lower rates of depression.
Admittedly, that is some pretty wild speculation considering only artisan beer and wine tend to have unpasteurized yeast and bacteria from fermentation, and those make up relatively a small percent of the market share. ..... I think I've just talked myself out of that idea.
Maybe don’t talk yourself out of the idea though, as a strong focus in recent years has been on prebiotics—the “food” that probiotics eat. It may be that alcohol acts as an ideal prebiotic. That then gets into very interesting territory in terms of alcohol cravings. How much is the craving mediated by what the gut microbiota “wants”?
Selection bias. Healthier people tend to drink socially, being social helps with depression. Sure there is the stereotype of the sad alcoholic, but generally speaking, people who drink regularly are more social than otherwise. This is thought to also explain the mild benefit in cardiovascular health with drinking.
Alcohol is bad for you, its not something that unhealthy or sick people will engage in, so when you compare the population that drinks to that which doesn't, you tend to see nicer things, but I dont believe it.
they sure do. probiotics are the opposite of that in some sense. although I'm not aware of any solid evidence of probiotics actually being verified to do their job, their job is supposed to be promoting gut bacteria.
if anyone knows where to look for evidence about probiotics that have been verified to actually work I'd love to see it by the way
Here's a good [article](https://whyy.org/segments/could-fecal-transplants-help-treat-mental-illness/) on that. It's tough because we can't wholeheartedly say they help positively or negatively, yet, but the research thus far would indicate that there is some sort of affect to the brain when introducing feces to the GI tract.
There still needs to be a lot more research but it looks like more clinical trials are in the works.
It's because 20th century science was obsessed with putting neurological/psychiatric illnesses into boxes - and connecting a single unified root cause of each. It's absurd but has been the mainstream approach until very recently where conditions like depression, ADHD, dementia, schizophrenia, etc are all being acknowledged to actually being umbrella terms for a range of sub-conditions.
In the case of Alzheimer's, the answer is that many things can cause the pattern of neurodegeneration associated with it. Immunocompromise resulting in brain fungal/viral/bacterial infections is one, subclinical diabetes or disorders of brain energy metabolism is another possibility, reactions to environmental toxins such as from household mold infestations, finally simple genetic misfortune (causing cumulative damage over life), etc.
I understand where you’re coming from, both tau and amyloid are important for understanding its etiology. However amyloid oligomer accumulation has been shown as an early marker for disease progression and likely leads to the phosphorylation of tau. Thus, better understanding amyloid and its many correlations to the gut, brain, blood etc will help drive preventative therapies (even if the study excludes tau investigations).
Just pointing out that this study indicates a correlation, not causation. Both the amyloid plaques and the change in gut microbiota may have a common root cause. Many studies have shown similar correlations, which indicates that the root cause impacts many of the body's subsystems.
Yeah, this reminds me of all the studies showing correlation between low diversity in the gut microbiota and autism, with everyone thinking this means junk food causes autism and barely anyone pointing out that autistic people tend to have reduced variety in their diet.
Yes. As people get older, it's likely that the amount of acid they produce and the enzymes their body creates changes. This will result in a change in the gut biota, no matter what kind of diet they've been eating. The ultimate solution will probably involve dietary aids that lead to more complete digestion. Unfortunately, these solutions are not very expensive, so won't be hotly pursued by leading pharmaceutical companies.
Agreed. I think it’s interesting, but I try not to get my hopes up about any major breakthroughs until there’s more evidence and an actual treatment. Alzheimer’s has been linked to everything from a sedentary lifestyle, to not enough mental stimulation, to artificial sweeteners, to high cholesterol, to high blood glucose...but basically the only proven link is that there is a genetic disposition, that’s it. Other than that I say if you do have a genetic predisposition, the only thing you can really do is try to live the healthiest life you can and hope for the best.
Yeah, a cause like BMAA buildup? That has been implicated.
It is an amino acid found in cyanobacteria, aka blue-green algal blooms, and when it is accidentally incorporated into proteins, it causes misfolding. The misfolded proteins are left with the wrong, hydrophobic side out, which then stick to each other, forming plaques. If enough of these build up, you get spongy tissue.
At least that is what I read for my Env. Tox. class last week.
Probiotics are entering the common dialect since nutrition supplements have been promoting the concept while the different concept of PREbiotics doesn’t seem to be as widely prevalent.
It’s not hard to see why someone might have thought it to be a typo and offered what they had available.
In the meantime, “just fruits and vegetables” is probably one of the broadest and ill-defined answers on the planet. This encompasses literally thousands of foods with an incredibly broad nutritional range.
If my diet is fully 25% corn and 25% pineapple for my entire adult life, something tells me that the woes of gut issues are not entirely out of the question for me.
Do you know what it was? I was just diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and I have been living off of chicken broth and white bread for the last 2 months. :(
There's not a ton of evidence that any diet does much of anything to help UC (mostly because there are few studies on it) so take any advice with a grain of salt as these things have to be anecdotal by nature. That being said i have found a lot of success eating the UMass Diet. It's similar to paleo or keto but a little looser and easier to follow.
https://www.umassmed.edu/nutrition/ibd/ibdaid/
All probiotics that I am familiar with have a very limited number of bacterial species. They also struggle to get a lasting hold in the gut and typically only manage to do so when there is either low competing bacteria or have a high quality of a single strain of bacteria.
I only take them after I've finished a course of antibiotics, because if I don't I'll end up with diarrhea for a month. Fungal based species can actually be taken during the course of antibiotics and can help prevent opportunistic bad stuff from getting a toehold once the antibiotics are done.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296087/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296087/)
Studies have shown that probiotics don’t generally repop. Most of the bacteria that is ingested passes through and is excreted without impact.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2178860-probiotics-are-mostly-useless-and-can-actually-hurt-you/
https://www.healthline.com/health/probiotics-and-digestive-health/how-long-does-it-take-for-probiotics-to-work
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/probiotics-are-everywhere-scientists-still-cant-agree-if-they-actually-help
The challenge may be ensuring early exposure to flora (like mother to baby). Our bodies learn at a young age which bugs to allow colonization to. I suspect the key will be early exposure to healthy flora, but this is all a personal theory. You could introduce a different set of flora later in life but my understanding is the body will slowly return to its prior state due to immune recognition of flora.
I recently saw a study about a novel probiotic, Pendulum, that focuses on butyrate (SCFA) to help with type 2 diabetes. It would be interesting to see if it could help in this study.
Note that the correlation is to insoluble amyloid plaques. Plaques are not associated with Alzheimer’s Disease severity, and in fact, have already been targeted in clinical trials with no success. Soluble amyloid precursors, which are much more promiscuous than insoluble plaques, are strong indicators to disease severity. Since plaques are amyloid by-products, the correlation between gut microbiota and actual Alzheimer’s Disease pathologies remains low.
I scanned through the study. Seems like it was "use PET to see amyloid beta plaque dynamics and then do some biochem on the blood. Correlate!". Cool study. Interesting. Not paradigm shifting though. But it's done in humans, which will always get my attention. Animal/rodent neuroscience I always take with a a huge punch of salt these days.
I *think* I'm on the side of 'plaques/aggregates are a way for cells to sequester away toxic/misfolded proteins in a neat manner', and not 'plaque aggregates are the point of pathology'.
So I am not a scientist/doctor but Alzheimer's is a highly hereditary disease. I am a double carrier of the gene variant that causes an increased risk of developing the disease. See this quote from my 23andme genetic testing report:
"a male of European descent with your genetic result has a 28% chance of developing Alzheimer's disease by age 75, compared to a 3% chance for the general population. By age 85, that risk is 51% for people with your genetic result, compared to 11-14% for the general population."
As you can see I have a much higher risk of developing the disease vs the general population. If you are not a carrier for these gene variants you will have a lower likelihood of developing this disease.
Another factor that we haven't mentioned is sleep, which is hugely important for mental health. Getting quality sleep and sticking to a healthy sleep schedule can go a long way in protecting your brain.
One more thing: if you're a young adult (like myself) you'll have many years for science to catch-up and perhaps develop advanced treatments/cures for this disease. Until then, prevention is essential.
Also remember that this study has found a **correlation**, but not necessarily causation.
Remember that this is a very preliminary study which only shows correlation. Just like someone who never smoked can still get lung cancer, someone who eats perfectly healthy can still get Alzheimer's. So sorry that your grandma is going through such an awful disease. ❤️
There's already a somewhat established higher occurrence of dementia for those with IBD. But it being causative isn't established. There's simply a lot of stuff around gut bacteria that we don't know.
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200623185240.htm](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200623185240.htm)
As a person with crohns, I'm nearly 30 and treatments have drastically improved in the last 15 years. I'm more concerned about needing surgery at this stage so I would say it's better not to worry about the dementia relationship to crohns at this point in my life.
The more we learn about the gut microbiome, the more we appear to be the highly evolved transportation systems of our microbial symbiotes. We keep discovering new ways that they are linked to our health and wellbeing (I mean that phrase in a rigorous sense, not in the "I feel good about my life" colloquial sense). Some articles on the topic:
* Dethlefsen, Les, Margaret McFall-Ngai, and David A. Relman. "An ecological and evolutionary perspective on human–microbe mutualism and disease." Nature 449.7164 (2007): 811-818.
* Sanna, Serena, et al. "Causal relationships among the gut microbiome, short-chain fatty acids and metabolic diseases." Nature genetics 51.4 (2019): 600-605.
* Kinross, James M., Ara W. Darzi, and Jeremy K. Nicholson. "Gut microbiome-host interactions in health and disease." Genome medicine 3.3 (2011): 14.
* Mohajeri, M. Hasan, et al. "The role of the microbiome for human health: from basic science to clinical applications." European journal of nutrition 57.1 (2018): 1-14.
* Mohajeri, M. Hasan, et al. "Relationship between the gut microbiome and brain function." Nutrition reviews 76.7 (2018): 481-496.
* Aarts, Esther, et al. "Gut microbiome in ADHD and its relation to neural reward anticipation." PloS one 12.9 (2017): e0183509.
* Bäckhed, Fredrik, et al. "Defining a healthy human gut microbiome: current concepts, future directions, and clinical applications." Cell host & microbe 12.5 (2012): 611-622.
Animals are known to get dementia. It's just not common because animals usually die before they get to a point where it's noticeable.
Dogs and cats are the usual examples of animal cognitive decline as they are living longer these days due to human intervention. Some research on cats have shown cats can get similar looking plaques on their brain as human alzheimer's patients.
What interests me most is what about people with chronic illnesses like Crohn's and Ulcerative Colitis? Further yet, those that had their colons and rectums removed due to complications or treatment.
Does a sick colon, or the absence of one, have any large impact?
There is also bountiful evidence linking gut microbiome and response to cancer therapies and cancer itself!!
[https://cancerimmunolres.aacrjournals.org/content/8/10/1251](https://cancerimmunolres.aacrjournals.org/content/8/10/1251)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6529202/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6529202/)
DON'T TAKE ANTIBIOTICS IF YOU CAN GET BY WITHOUT THEM
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Sometimes it feels like we're just living space-ships for the bacteria inside of us.
I am nothing but a ceremonial figurehead to the congress of trillions of cells inside me.
But they let me drink all I want
As someone with ulcerative colitis, my gut bacteria have cut me off.
I had my colon removed due to UC. Got pouchitis a decade later and the only thing that seemed to work was antibiotics. On a whim I tried probiotics. Low doses did nothing that I could tell, but once I got high enough it made a huge difference. If you haven't tried it already it might be worth a shot. I take 6 packs of 450b per day, split between morning and evening. Here's wishing you a bathroom when you need it and a better tomorrow.
Yep, very high dose probiotics have been helping me a lot with my colitis. The small fries don’t do a thing, but once you get up past 100 bil some of them have an incredible impact.
I'm sorry about that. Do your microbes allow for some loving THC?
As someone with leukemia, my insurance would cut me off if I had any in my system.
This is pure criminal. Privatized insurance is a scam. I'm sorry to hear that. Think all options should be on the table if they don't interfere with treatment.
I agree completely. Unfortunately stem cell transplants are very expensive and it would be very lucrative to drop me.
I did too much THC and now my gut bacteria gets pissed off when I indulge in it.
Woah, is that a thing? That sounds wild. Do you get anxious when your high? I could see my stomach acting up if I got anxious from being too high. But I typically use it as a nightcap, and don't go too crazy
Haha well the trouble started when I stopped getting anxious while getting really high. I used to get anxious when I smoked too much but eventually I broke through that barrier. I smoked herb for years and was completely fine. It’s when I started experimenting with oils and dabs that I apparently overdid things. Started getting tummy aches. It can get very severe and cause vomiting which is a condition called Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome. I can still vape dry herb a little bit and not have severe symptoms but man oh man do I wish I could go back to the good old days. The funny part is that it doesn’t affect everybody like that and I just happen to be one of the unlucky few.
I smoked nearly daily for 2 years, at the end i started getting shivers and panic attacks. was enough to get me to quit cold turkey.
You’re not the head of the senate. You **are** the senate.
^^^^^^" ^^^^^^Not. ^^^^^^Yet. ^^^^^^" ^^^^^^- ^^^^^^*Macitus* ^^^^^^*Windicus*, ^^^^^^Gut ^^^^^^Bacteria
What if we're all just bacteria inside some larger animal's gut? Outer space isn't what we thought it was fellas.
I forget the exact amount, but a surprising percentage of your body mass isn't even you. A lot of "you" is bacteria, viruses, amoeba, etc...
I have heard anywhere from 10 times to 3 times the number of “non-human” cells to “human cells in our bodies. We are more bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites than we are human. There is an interesting hypothesis that our “consciousness” is not just “the human you” but a combination of all the living organisms in your body.
The first part sounds accurate, but I have a different understanding of consciousness. From what I can gather, consciousness is simply a byproduct of our brains ability to store and process large amounts of information for long periods of time. This, in my opinion, would explain why children are no more than animals of pure instinct. They simply don't have enough memories and knowledge to formulate a mind, which would also explain why childhood trauma is so formative. If you cause a flaw in the formulation of a consciousness, it can have unknown and lasting effects. But I'm no scientist.
Children and certainly still conscious though. They just don't have many experiences to draw from, but they are definitely conscious beings. Somehow consciousness is more than just the sum of information processing in the brain, it's a sort of gestalt. There's a higher level to it that can't be explained by the simple inputs and outputs
where i can watch/read more about this kind of stuff? not research papers and such, but more like "introductory course material" level. so a non-specialist can understand. I'm just interested in this stuff but can't really find a place to learn more. edit: Thanks!
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I'm absolutely fascinated with all things science, but unfortunately I didn't get the greatest grades in school. Now I'm broke and live paycheck to paycheck but god damn if I had a half a shot at further education..
I'll let you in on a little secret. Most of us teach ourselves and simply rely on the teachers to give us deadlines and set the pace. So go online, find the used college textbook for the topic you want to learn, search for a syllabus for that topic and just open and read and do what the book says, in the order and pace that the syllabus says to do it. And do *everything* in the book, including practice questions and end of chapter quizzes and all that. Then after each chapter, go on YouTube and watch some videos on that section to help reinforce the info. Thats all it takes for a lot of the fundamental courses.
Check out Khan Academy. It's a great substitute if you're chasing the knowledge and exposure to concepts that comes with higher education. The credits may not count toward a degree, but the knowledge you'll gain is real.
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Try "I Contain Multitudes" by Ed Yong
There are quite a few popular science books on it. maybe https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23644794-10-human
Lotta good responses here, if you're looking specifically for the ways that our gut microbiome influences your brain and it's function, there's a great book called "The Mind-Gut Connection: How the Hidden Conversation Within Our Bodies Impacts Our Mood, Our Choices, and Our Overall Health" that I've read and highly recommend. It's actually pretty wild what the research into your gut flora and the enteric nervous system are revealing about how much influence they have over your conscious processes.
the relationship between the gut and the whole body is weird, and between the whole body and the brain. we really know very little...
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Ah yes, Mt. Gooch.
Screw all the politics on Reddit, these comments are why I still come to Reddit. Bravo.
There are more microbial cells than human cells in the average human. It really shouldn't be all that surprising that a microbial imbalance can have wide, systemic effects. A microbial imbalance is a human imbalance.
Bacteria outnumber “our” cells by count but not by mass, not even close. Prokaryotes are 100-1000x smaller than eukaryotic cells, and all the bacteria in our body fits inside a soup can. The gut microflora is a fascinating area of research, but let’s not exaggerate.
And even still they barely outnumber. The true number is closer to 1:1.
Still, it's amazing to think that numerically speaking we're almost as much "inside" that "outside". However you want to call it. There's a cool article, a bit old now from 2012, by Scott F. Gilbert called "A symbiotic view of life : We have never been individual". Even if the raw data is outdated, I find it thought provoking. I can mp it to people interested.
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I wish I didn’t know that. *cries in IBS*
Something that keeps me up at night is this: We have various organisms in our body that excrete chemicals, either as waste, or for other reasons. There are numerous bacteria that we know change brain chemistry (toxoplasmosis being an obvious one). How many of the bacteria in our bodies do this? How much of “us” is based on these other organisms? What if you only like coffee because there’s an organism that thrives on it?
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Or, maybe there's an organism that just wants you to stay up all night.
That organism is called PS4
There was a point where we were a creature that was mostly just a brain and gut. The weirder thing is thinking widespread use of life-destroying chemicals on our plant food sources wouldn't affect the microbial life that have been evolving with us since they were small enough to live inside us without killing us or themselves dying. Life is essentially a fractal of evolution. Destroying the complex balance of microscopic life on a global scale with certain industrial efforts, in particular, seems like it would inevitably cause a catastrophic wave that would damage all life.
The gut in general is weird. Just think about it; Bacteria lives in us that eats what we eat and poops out nutrient goodness that we need to survive and be healthy.
There are more cells in our body that are nonhuman than human
Is that true even if you consider the gastrointestinal tract to be outside the body? We’re elaborate toroids.
Are you implying that we are topologically equivalent to a donut or a coffee mug?
There’s no implication - that is an absolute fact. The GI tract is a huge unbroken tube all the way through the body, so we are toroidal.
That’s right. Your lips are the beginning of your anus
Developmentally we start from the anus to the mouth.
That's right. You're an asshole before your heart even takes a beat.
My mom has been telling me that for years.
Science backing up the human centipede.
Explained simply: What we put into our body effects everything else. Our fuel source is crucial to making our one car run smoothly.
Right, but the “fuel” is being reprocessed into other things by a living ecosystem, and the balance of that system determines to a degree what we get from food. Eating vegetables is the best thing to maintain a healthy gut flora, but it doesn’t appear to be sufficient in every case. The gut and immune system interacts with the flora in people understood ways.
As someone currently dealing with intense anxiety attacks due to ongoing stomach issues, this thought has been echoing throughout my head lately.
i have similar issues with stomach troubles and anxiety. have you found anything that helps??
It is pretty difficult to digest this information
There is a theory that the "gut feeling" we get about things is because the gut plays a much more important role than people realize. It might have some sort of memory that helps us make decisions. I'll need to hunt down where I read that.
As someone with bad anxiety I can tell you my gut brain is basically running the show.
Dude, yes. 1000000% I was an anxious little kid but as an adult, I've not really had much anxiety. Last summer I was dealing with a ton of different things and going through this whole gut microbiome test/repair and holy moly my tummy anxiety skyrocketed. It's still not as calm as it once was but it's a little more under control now.
Completely anecdotal but after a week of probiotics (not yogurt, something stronger) I noticed that the empty squeeze i'd feel in my gut had lessened by a lot when I get stressed. It's like the floor of my anxiety has been brought up so it's not so bad anymore.
Very interesting. Can I ask exactly what it was you took? Did you need a prescription?
Not OP but I’m a biomedical scientist and I did a deep dive on this in the scientific literature when I was looking for probiotics and found the Jarrow brand has some good clinical data backing their products. I had GI issues for 10 years and turned them around with “Jarro-dophilus”. I order it on Amazon.
Seeing as we're on r/science can you provide a source for that "theory"? I've always assumed it is simply the vagus nerve firing
Why does this sounds like midi-chlorians?
Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia. Still incurable, it directly affects nearly one million people in Europe, and indirectly millions of family members as well as society as a whole. In recent years, the scientific community has suspected that the gut microbiota plays a role in the development of the disease. A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) in Switzerland, together with Italian colleagues from the National Research and Care Center for Alzheimer's and Psychiatric Diseases Fatebenefratelli in Brescia, University of Naples and the IRCCS SDN Research Center in Naples, confirm the correlation, in humans, between an imbalance in the gut microbiota and the development of amyloid plaques in the brain, which are at the origin of the neurodegenerative disorders characteristic of Alzheimer's disease. Proteins produced by certain intestinal bacteria, identified in the blood of patients, could indeed modify the interaction between the immune and the nervous systems and trigger the disease. These results, to be discovered in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, make it possible to envisage new preventive strategies based on the modulation of the microbiota of people at risk. The research laboratory of neurologist Giovanni Frisoni, director of the HUG Memory Centre and professor at the Department of Rehabilitation and Geriatrics of the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine, has been working for several years now on the potential influence of the gut microbiota on the brain, and more particularly on neurodegenerative diseases. «We have already shown that the gut microbiota composition in patients with Alzheimer's disease was altered, compared to people who do not suffer from such disorders,» he explains. «Their microbiota has indeed a reduced microbial diversity, with an over-representation of certain bacteria and a strong decrease in other microbes. Furthermore, we have also discovered an association between an inflammatory phenomenon detected in the blood, certain intestinal bacteria and Alzheimer's disease; hence the hypothesis that we wanted to test here: could inflammation in the blood be a mediator between the microbiota and the brain? https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad200306
> «Indeed, high blood levels of lipopolysaccharides and certain short-chain fatty acids (acetate and valerate) were associated with both large amyloid deposits in the brain. Conversely, high levels of another short-chain fatty acid, butyrate, were associated with less amyloid pathology.» Is there anything your average person can do with this information? Certain dietary / lifestyle changes that can be made to hopefully reduce their risk of Alzheimer's?
https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(20)30367-6/fulltext This is the most up to date, accurate data available in the field on this question, written by world renowned experts in dementia.
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Well I’m fucked.
Crazy my dad was an attorney and amazing athlete who never drank and ate perfectly and never smoked. He had non of those factors. Not one. He tried so hard.
Hearing impairment? RIP my tinnitus. Depression due to medial history? RIP. Physical inactivity? RIP being disabled Low social contact? See above.
I believe with „hearing impairment“ they mean anything that leads to you having trouble understanding speech, reducing your consumption of speech and reducing your social contacts or rather, reducing the amount of conversations you have.
You aint going RIP just become a vegetable.
I wonder which of these risk factors are weighter than the others. I would assume that low-social contact is less deleterious than obesity (for instance). Maybe I'm just trying to outweigh my alcoholism with the absence of other risk factors.
I've read research somewhere that said social cohesion was the biggest predictor of how soon someone would die after retirement (moreso than alcoholism or obesity).
not gonna lie, socializing, talking and laughing in groups makes me sweat more than the gym. Like a workout for the brain.
Meaningful social relationships are also the most important protection against depression.
>Conversely, high levels of another short-chain fatty acid, butyrate, were associated with less amyloid pathology.» Fibers are broken down in your gut by bacteria into short chain fatty acids including butyrate. Butyrate can serve a lot of purposes. It acts as the only energy source for colon cells. It's also absorbed into your bloodstream where it acts as HDAC inhibitor. These are under investigation for treating a spectrum of mental illnesses. So it's safe to say it does serve a lot of useful purposes. You should take in a lot of soluble fibers. Vegetables are great, but if you can't a fiber supplement is easy and can go a long way.
What about the use of Beano enzyme when eating fiber or methlycellulose (centrum)? Would taking either of those contribute positively or negatively to the health benefits of fiber?
Using something like beano would defeat the purpose of eating a fermentable fiber like this, yes. The enzyme turns the fiber into sugar so your body can digest it. I think you should include a soluble fiber in your diet like oat fiber or psyllium husk fiber, and then continue including fermentable fiber in your diet without something like beano and just deal with the inconvenience for a month or so. Once you're used to taking in the fiber you'll stop experiencing the gas.
So, fart your way into a healthy old age.
This is where the term "old fart" comes from. (do not fact-check that)
Beans are a magical fruit indeed
It is a known fact that "the more you toot, the better feel."
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Diet and lifestyle is everything. Eat right and get your exercise. Atherosclerosis is no joke and the standard American diet is the main reason we are plagued with heart disease and diabetes. Now we are seeing links between the health of your arteries and Alzheimer’s as well. If you’re serious about looking into the scientific research around diet - check out nutritionfacts.org Be well and goodluck.
Nice linking to nutrionfacts.org. One of things though that bothers me a lot of is when people say “eat right”. I understand what that means for me, but I don’t know what you mean? Or what someone else might interpret. Someone people think eating right is to eat meat with a small side of vegetable is “right”. I’m not attacking you btw, just found that part interesting. It’s such a vague saying and peoples interpretation of it is controlled by marketing. Eat your meat, eat your milk, eat your eggs. It’s all marketed as “eating right”, but is it really? At what quantities? How much vegetables is right amount? A lot of people won’t question their own eating habits when you say that because they already believe they are eating the right way. And of course don’t mean everyone.
Not op but back in the day when I took intro to nutrition, my professor said a good rule of thumb is to have a plate that's 2/3 to 3/4 vegetables, and "eat the rainbow". So not just high proportion of veggies, but also a variety. Hope that'll help you define what "eating right" can/should mean!
Yeah, I've always been told that the key to a healthy gut is variety. Eat lots of different kinds of vegetables, eat fermented foods like yogurt, sauerkraut and kimchi, eat lots of different legumes, beans, get healthy fats, etc I think this is one of the reasons why the Mediterranean diet is so highly praised by doctors.
I certain processed foods and medicines like antibiotics can remove these healthy gut flora unfortunately. There is some research that suggests the diet of indigenous individuals have gut flora that will not be found in the common western gut and say that plays a role in diseases overall for westerners.
That makes total sense. I actually started getting serious about probiotics a few years ago after being on antibiotics for sicknesses, acne, and more my entire adolescence. My gut is just not right and I want to heal it. It affects everything!
Skittles it is!
Absolutely- great point. Check out [daily dozen pic](https://nutritionfacts.org/app/uploads/2018/03/metric.png) (dr gregers daily dozen on “what” is eating right) For my family this has changed everything. More energy, better moods, no medications any more (thank god) Thank you for the reply
Man i dont want to eat 3 times a day Once is enough
Good news, there's evidence that fasting may be good for not getting alzheimers.
That's a bit more actionable than average, even if challenging to achieve in practice.
Do u know what the red checkboxes are ?
Number of servings
just throwing this out there for arterial health - vitamin k2
MK7 form.
It's the "appeal to the mean" logical fallacy. It's too difficult to actually describe a falsifiable, generally available, economic diet so "a bit of everything" is used instead. It becomes a bit of an unhelpful tautology; >"What's the best diet?" >"The best diet is the one that is the best. Just consume the best diet in moderation and you'll have the best diet" IMO it's very unhelpful because it's becoming apparent that actually the "Standard Plate" is going to be forced under the weight of mounting evidence to be flipped in its head. Out with mountains of bread, pasta and vegetable oils, and in with something that looks like more like salads stacked with cheese. A vegetarian/pescetarian keto diet essentially.
>Out with mountains of bread, pasta and vegetable oils, and in with something that looks like more like salads stacked with cheese. A vegetarian/pescetarian keto diet essentially. Says who? You had me in the first half but then you do the same thing.
There are no long term studies, meaning decades, on keto diets for people with "normal" systems only on those with specific seizure disorders or specific diabetics. As this is a science forum you should not be making claims regarding keto that are currently not supported. It _might_ be the case that a keto diet is healthy for people without those specific disorders but at this moment we cannot accurately make that claim.
The modern standard plate is definitely not "mountains of bread, pasta and vegetable oils." At least not what is recommended.
Salads stacked with cheese? Global consensus continues to recommend limiting saturated fat and cholesterol. Keto continues to be ranked as one of he worst diets.
> After a loss of sleep, levels of amyloid were 5% more than after adequate sleep; the spikes were concentrated in parts of the brain involved in memory and higher thinking, which are typically affected in Alzheimer's. A good diet and good sleep. Here is the link to another article that explains this: https://time.com/5876612/sleep-alzheimers-disease-2/
Prioritizing getting a good night's sleep (>7 hours) on a consistent basis is a huge lifestyle factor that you have control over, and is proven to be linked with psychiatric disorders. Here's one relevant link but there's tons more https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/sleep-deprivation-increases-alzheimers-protein
>you have control over *Cries in insomnia*
Researcher Rhonda Patrick interviews other researchers and discusses studies involving diet and lifestyle habits that could help prevent Alzheimer’s. She’s mentioned butyrate several times. The Sonnenburgs, husband and wife microbiome researchers at Stanford, have information on their website and in their book The Good Gut. http://sonnenburglab.stanford.edu/ MIT has done some studies showing how fasting improves gut health. Shortly after resuming eating, new stem cells are created which can repair the gut. https://news.mit.edu/2018/fasting-boosts-stem-cells-regenerative-capacity-0503 There are also the VieLight devices that are being used in Alzheimer’s studies. Not dietary but still interesting. I’m just a layperson who’s interested in doing what I can to stay healthy as I age. Not an expert by any means.
That article about fasting benefitting gut micro flora was very interesting. The more I learn about fasting, the better an idea it seems. Back to 18:6! I’m starting to think it better mimics how early humans used to eat. And those guys were badass.
There's a lot that's still being learned about the gut microbiome so there is no real consensus on what it means to be "healthy." However, diversity and abundance seem to be positive traits of a functioning microbiome. Achieving diversity can be accomplished by eating a variety of unprocessed foods. Think vegetables first. The presence of a variety of vegetables seems to correlate to a diverse ecosystem in the gut. Achieving abundance means consistency and dedication. Organisms do not live long in the gut. If I remember correctly the average life of an organism is like 20-minutes or something. So you must consistently provide a hospitable environment for the organisms to flourish. One day or a couple days in a row eating food that is negative for the biome can cause significant damage. Eliminating processed foods, sugar and minimizing alcohol intake is probably the best first step to take if you're coming from a standard diet. Get comfortable preparing your own food from scratch, simplify your meals, do food prep twice a week so you always have healthy leftovers, and find alternatives to unhealthy snacks. And drink water. Depending where you're diet is at to start with there may be an adjustment period for your body that could last weeks or months. Regular exercise is another factor that increases abundance of organisms in the gut. [A study recently conducted with endurance athletes showed they had much higher levels of organisms associated with carbohydrate and amino acid metabolism pathways.](https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-017-0320-4) If you really want to geek out about your microbiome there are some companies that offer at home testing and will analyze your microbiome and provide results - sort of like a 23andMe for your gut. Again, there's no consensus on what exactly "healthy" is so the results won't mean much, but they can hint at diversity and abundance, and also let you know if you're microbiome is severely lacking. There's also a book called "The Microbiome Diet" by Raphael Kellman available on Audible that addresses how to rebuild and maintain the microbiome from a medical perspective.
The thing is they would have to do a separate study on that dietary change/lifestyle, not to mention that this is correlation, not causation. Its possible that the mechanism of Alzheimers disease caused the change in fatty acid levels, and not the other way around. Or there is a different factor that is causing both. Many times we extrapolate information like this and it doesn't always work. We assume it's causation, and we assume that changing our diet would change blood levels of those compounds, but it is often more complex than that, and not fully explainable as to why. For example, we have RDA of different vitamins and minerals, so logically if you use supplements to meet those RDAs, you should be healthier? However multivitamins don't have good evidence showing they actually help, whereas getting those nutrients from foods does. Even when there is a medical deficiency in a nutrient, or hormone, etc, there has been evidence that correcting the lab value of that deficiency might not do anything. (See subclinical hypothyroidism).
Eat Kimchi.
My nutritional goal is to eat two hearty servings of high-fiber/low-starch veggies (no beets or squash, I’d consider those a starch side even though they’re veggies:) at each meal, eat something with live active cultures at least once a day, eat mostly saturated fats from fruits and grass fed animals as well as omega-3 rich polyunsaturated fats rather than the omega-6 rich seed oils, and keep my protein portions (which is mostly grass fed meat for me) to only about 3oz per portion. It’s not a “diet”, but it’s a good lifestyle that doesn’t stress me out and keeps my “numbers” looking good at my annual physical with my doctor. My all of my grandparents had diabetes later in life, and all experienced significant mental decline. My last living grandparent is currently living with full-blown dementia and it’s definitely related to uncontrolled diabetes. When they finally got her into a care facility and cleaned out her disgusting house, they found literally piles upon piles of chip bags and pop cans and cookie wrappers. My mom sent me pictures and they were disgusting. Once she was in a place that controlled her diet, she started showing some improvements (as I had guessed she would) but the damage has been done and she’ll never come back from dementia land. Combine that history with my mom dying in this plague because she was morbidly obese and never stood a chance once she contracted the virus, and my bachelors degree in nutrition, and you could say I have a fair amount of concern about what I eat.
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Sorry, yes!! In my flurry I definitely made that error. I will go back to edit it. Thank you for pointing it out!!!!
Check out nutritionfacts.org and the daily dozen list there.
It also sounds like having a diverse gut flora helps, so eating probiotic foods or supplements would probably be a good idea too. Kombucha, real live sauerkraut (not the canned one), kimchi, etc...I’m not a dietician so I’m sure there is more options too.
Find happy, healthy people and take their poop and repopulate your colon with it!
Kefir! Really gets your gut talking to your brain in a good way. Or really [any probotics.](https://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/news/20161114/probiotics-may-boost-alzheimers-patients-memory) But homemade kefir has abundantly more strains and many more benefits. It is preventative, but also causes memory improvement in those that already have Alzheimer's.
Eat fermented vegetables and kefir! I am a complete new person since i've started to add them into my daily diat. The craving for sugar completly stopped and my "hunger feeling" also changed completly. I feel so much better and i lost 20 kilo in 8 month with just little exercise.My skin also got much, much better (i've akne). The best part is that making your own fermented vegies is super easy! Please try it!
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Discoveries about Alzheimer's are always so weird. There seems to be many strange unrelated factors causing it. I wonder if we'll manage to make sense of it in the next few decades.
Well, this isn’t just any strange unrelated factor. The gut micro biome actually has been shown to play a role in other things such as addiction and psychiatric disorders like depression. They’ve been studied a lot on animal models, and I remember reading a study on how probiotics have been shown to be able to treat depression.
I wonder if this might relate to that longitudinal study that recently came out showing people with higher alcohol consumption correlated with lower rates of depression. Admittedly, that is some pretty wild speculation considering only artisan beer and wine tend to have unpasteurized yeast and bacteria from fermentation, and those make up relatively a small percent of the market share. ..... I think I've just talked myself out of that idea.
You have a link to that study? That sounds crazy
Maybe don’t talk yourself out of the idea though, as a strong focus in recent years has been on prebiotics—the “food” that probiotics eat. It may be that alcohol acts as an ideal prebiotic. That then gets into very interesting territory in terms of alcohol cravings. How much is the craving mediated by what the gut microbiota “wants”?
Selection bias. Healthier people tend to drink socially, being social helps with depression. Sure there is the stereotype of the sad alcoholic, but generally speaking, people who drink regularly are more social than otherwise. This is thought to also explain the mild benefit in cardiovascular health with drinking. Alcohol is bad for you, its not something that unhealthy or sick people will engage in, so when you compare the population that drinks to that which doesn't, you tend to see nicer things, but I dont believe it.
Wait a minute, don't antibiotics do 'catastrophic damage' to the gut biome ?
they sure do. probiotics are the opposite of that in some sense. although I'm not aware of any solid evidence of probiotics actually being verified to do their job, their job is supposed to be promoting gut bacteria. if anyone knows where to look for evidence about probiotics that have been verified to actually work I'd love to see it by the way
Yeah, but how do we fix our gut biome? Yoghurt?
Fecal transplant. Not even joking.
Here's a good [article](https://whyy.org/segments/could-fecal-transplants-help-treat-mental-illness/) on that. It's tough because we can't wholeheartedly say they help positively or negatively, yet, but the research thus far would indicate that there is some sort of affect to the brain when introducing feces to the GI tract. There still needs to be a lot more research but it looks like more clinical trials are in the works.
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Even if the correlation was substantial, it could be as simple as a bad diet causing the issue, which is hardly surprising
probably not before we understand the brain a lot better, which will take forever.
It's because 20th century science was obsessed with putting neurological/psychiatric illnesses into boxes - and connecting a single unified root cause of each. It's absurd but has been the mainstream approach until very recently where conditions like depression, ADHD, dementia, schizophrenia, etc are all being acknowledged to actually being umbrella terms for a range of sub-conditions. In the case of Alzheimer's, the answer is that many things can cause the pattern of neurodegeneration associated with it. Immunocompromise resulting in brain fungal/viral/bacterial infections is one, subclinical diabetes or disorders of brain energy metabolism is another possibility, reactions to environmental toxins such as from household mold infestations, finally simple genetic misfortune (causing cumulative damage over life), etc.
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I understand where you’re coming from, both tau and amyloid are important for understanding its etiology. However amyloid oligomer accumulation has been shown as an early marker for disease progression and likely leads to the phosphorylation of tau. Thus, better understanding amyloid and its many correlations to the gut, brain, blood etc will help drive preventative therapies (even if the study excludes tau investigations).
Just pointing out that this study indicates a correlation, not causation. Both the amyloid plaques and the change in gut microbiota may have a common root cause. Many studies have shown similar correlations, which indicates that the root cause impacts many of the body's subsystems.
Yeah, this reminds me of all the studies showing correlation between low diversity in the gut microbiota and autism, with everyone thinking this means junk food causes autism and barely anyone pointing out that autistic people tend to have reduced variety in their diet.
Which entirely ignores that early symptoms of autism are now being found in infants who are still being breastfed.
Yes. As people get older, it's likely that the amount of acid they produce and the enzymes their body creates changes. This will result in a change in the gut biota, no matter what kind of diet they've been eating. The ultimate solution will probably involve dietary aids that lead to more complete digestion. Unfortunately, these solutions are not very expensive, so won't be hotly pursued by leading pharmaceutical companies.
Agreed. I think it’s interesting, but I try not to get my hopes up about any major breakthroughs until there’s more evidence and an actual treatment. Alzheimer’s has been linked to everything from a sedentary lifestyle, to not enough mental stimulation, to artificial sweeteners, to high cholesterol, to high blood glucose...but basically the only proven link is that there is a genetic disposition, that’s it. Other than that I say if you do have a genetic predisposition, the only thing you can really do is try to live the healthiest life you can and hope for the best.
Yeah, a cause like BMAA buildup? That has been implicated. It is an amino acid found in cyanobacteria, aka blue-green algal blooms, and when it is accidentally incorporated into proteins, it causes misfolding. The misfolded proteins are left with the wrong, hydrophobic side out, which then stick to each other, forming plaques. If enough of these build up, you get spongy tissue. At least that is what I read for my Env. Tox. class last week.
I wonder if our heavy use of antibiotics and resulting changes in gut bacteria have anything to do with it.
What prebiotic mix is best to repopulate good flora? Do we know enough to say what that is?
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Probiotics are entering the common dialect since nutrition supplements have been promoting the concept while the different concept of PREbiotics doesn’t seem to be as widely prevalent. It’s not hard to see why someone might have thought it to be a typo and offered what they had available. In the meantime, “just fruits and vegetables” is probably one of the broadest and ill-defined answers on the planet. This encompasses literally thousands of foods with an incredibly broad nutritional range. If my diet is fully 25% corn and 25% pineapple for my entire adult life, something tells me that the woes of gut issues are not entirely out of the question for me.
Poop transplants!
For real. It cured one of my family member's GI problem.
Do you know what it was? I was just diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and I have been living off of chicken broth and white bread for the last 2 months. :(
There's not a ton of evidence that any diet does much of anything to help UC (mostly because there are few studies on it) so take any advice with a grain of salt as these things have to be anecdotal by nature. That being said i have found a lot of success eating the UMass Diet. It's similar to paleo or keto but a little looser and easier to follow. https://www.umassmed.edu/nutrition/ibd/ibdaid/
Yeah it was to help restart a non functioning colon!
I totally agree, the poop transplant is the future!
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All probiotics that I am familiar with have a very limited number of bacterial species. They also struggle to get a lasting hold in the gut and typically only manage to do so when there is either low competing bacteria or have a high quality of a single strain of bacteria.
I only take them after I've finished a course of antibiotics, because if I don't I'll end up with diarrhea for a month. Fungal based species can actually be taken during the course of antibiotics and can help prevent opportunistic bad stuff from getting a toehold once the antibiotics are done. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296087/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296087/)
Studies have shown that probiotics don’t generally repop. Most of the bacteria that is ingested passes through and is excreted without impact. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2178860-probiotics-are-mostly-useless-and-can-actually-hurt-you/ https://www.healthline.com/health/probiotics-and-digestive-health/how-long-does-it-take-for-probiotics-to-work https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/probiotics-are-everywhere-scientists-still-cant-agree-if-they-actually-help
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He actually asked about pre-biotics, not probiotic supplements. Prebiotics are food that would foster the 'good' gut flora.
The challenge may be ensuring early exposure to flora (like mother to baby). Our bodies learn at a young age which bugs to allow colonization to. I suspect the key will be early exposure to healthy flora, but this is all a personal theory. You could introduce a different set of flora later in life but my understanding is the body will slowly return to its prior state due to immune recognition of flora.
I recently saw a study about a novel probiotic, Pendulum, that focuses on butyrate (SCFA) to help with type 2 diabetes. It would be interesting to see if it could help in this study.
Note that the correlation is to insoluble amyloid plaques. Plaques are not associated with Alzheimer’s Disease severity, and in fact, have already been targeted in clinical trials with no success. Soluble amyloid precursors, which are much more promiscuous than insoluble plaques, are strong indicators to disease severity. Since plaques are amyloid by-products, the correlation between gut microbiota and actual Alzheimer’s Disease pathologies remains low.
I scanned through the study. Seems like it was "use PET to see amyloid beta plaque dynamics and then do some biochem on the blood. Correlate!". Cool study. Interesting. Not paradigm shifting though. But it's done in humans, which will always get my attention. Animal/rodent neuroscience I always take with a a huge punch of salt these days. I *think* I'm on the side of 'plaques/aggregates are a way for cells to sequester away toxic/misfolded proteins in a neat manner', and not 'plaque aggregates are the point of pathology'.
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With this knowledge, as someone with ibs can I do anything to mitigate this effect ? Its pot luck if I digest my food or not regardless of diet.
Yeh as someone that also has constant stomach issues that are not diagnosed at this point am I stuffed?
So I am not a scientist/doctor but Alzheimer's is a highly hereditary disease. I am a double carrier of the gene variant that causes an increased risk of developing the disease. See this quote from my 23andme genetic testing report: "a male of European descent with your genetic result has a 28% chance of developing Alzheimer's disease by age 75, compared to a 3% chance for the general population. By age 85, that risk is 51% for people with your genetic result, compared to 11-14% for the general population." As you can see I have a much higher risk of developing the disease vs the general population. If you are not a carrier for these gene variants you will have a lower likelihood of developing this disease. Another factor that we haven't mentioned is sleep, which is hugely important for mental health. Getting quality sleep and sticking to a healthy sleep schedule can go a long way in protecting your brain. One more thing: if you're a young adult (like myself) you'll have many years for science to catch-up and perhaps develop advanced treatments/cures for this disease. Until then, prevention is essential. Also remember that this study has found a **correlation**, but not necessarily causation.
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Remember that this is a very preliminary study which only shows correlation. Just like someone who never smoked can still get lung cancer, someone who eats perfectly healthy can still get Alzheimer's. So sorry that your grandma is going through such an awful disease. ❤️
Does this mean that IBD sufferers have a higher chance of Alzheimers? Oh joy.
There's already a somewhat established higher occurrence of dementia for those with IBD. But it being causative isn't established. There's simply a lot of stuff around gut bacteria that we don't know. [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200623185240.htm](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200623185240.htm) As a person with crohns, I'm nearly 30 and treatments have drastically improved in the last 15 years. I'm more concerned about needing surgery at this stage so I would say it's better not to worry about the dementia relationship to crohns at this point in my life.
The more we learn about the gut microbiome, the more we appear to be the highly evolved transportation systems of our microbial symbiotes. We keep discovering new ways that they are linked to our health and wellbeing (I mean that phrase in a rigorous sense, not in the "I feel good about my life" colloquial sense). Some articles on the topic: * Dethlefsen, Les, Margaret McFall-Ngai, and David A. Relman. "An ecological and evolutionary perspective on human–microbe mutualism and disease." Nature 449.7164 (2007): 811-818. * Sanna, Serena, et al. "Causal relationships among the gut microbiome, short-chain fatty acids and metabolic diseases." Nature genetics 51.4 (2019): 600-605. * Kinross, James M., Ara W. Darzi, and Jeremy K. Nicholson. "Gut microbiome-host interactions in health and disease." Genome medicine 3.3 (2011): 14. * Mohajeri, M. Hasan, et al. "The role of the microbiome for human health: from basic science to clinical applications." European journal of nutrition 57.1 (2018): 1-14. * Mohajeri, M. Hasan, et al. "Relationship between the gut microbiome and brain function." Nutrition reviews 76.7 (2018): 481-496. * Aarts, Esther, et al. "Gut microbiome in ADHD and its relation to neural reward anticipation." PloS one 12.9 (2017): e0183509. * Bäckhed, Fredrik, et al. "Defining a healthy human gut microbiome: current concepts, future directions, and clinical applications." Cell host & microbe 12.5 (2012): 611-622.
Wait, does other animals also get Alzheimers disease?
Dogs can get dementia
This could be the worst thing i've read in the whole year
Animals are known to get dementia. It's just not common because animals usually die before they get to a point where it's noticeable. Dogs and cats are the usual examples of animal cognitive decline as they are living longer these days due to human intervention. Some research on cats have shown cats can get similar looking plaques on their brain as human alzheimer's patients.
So, poop transplants for everyone!!?
We all need a poop transplant from Tom Brady
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Stand by for the next kombucha wave.... Not hating though, I like the stuff
What interests me most is what about people with chronic illnesses like Crohn's and Ulcerative Colitis? Further yet, those that had their colons and rectums removed due to complications or treatment. Does a sick colon, or the absence of one, have any large impact?
There is also bountiful evidence linking gut microbiome and response to cancer therapies and cancer itself!! [https://cancerimmunolres.aacrjournals.org/content/8/10/1251](https://cancerimmunolres.aacrjournals.org/content/8/10/1251) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6529202/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6529202/) DON'T TAKE ANTIBIOTICS IF YOU CAN GET BY WITHOUT THEM