268 replies to this topic

[Nate-2004]

Renew Life has a good rep for quality as a probiotic if you can get it from a vendor who's been storing it correctly. However, I read this recently. I would say that probiotics might be better if your diet isn't as high in fiber as it needs to be. You could be better off getting plenty of glutamine, FOS, fish oil and basic fibers from this smoothie, than wasting your money and time on lactobacillus probiotics. Source Naturals has big bottles of FOS and BulkSupplements makes the best quality glutamine, but if you're like me and drink chocolate muscle feast shakes before a workout, you'll probably get the same amount of glutamine from that. Glutamine builds the mucin lining that akkermansia feeds on. 

 

The Biocollective got back to me saying my shipment arrived via FedEx way too late so they're sending me a new one. I hate pooping into a paper thingamajig again but, for the sake of knowledge I'll do it. 

 

I also heard they've started charging members $140, not sure if this is true or what. Glad I got in on the ground floor when it was free.

Edited by Nate-2004, 11 August 2017 - 01:45 PM.

[normalizing]

i was also trying out this; https://www.swansonv...AiABEgJb6_D_BwE which is not yogurt but yet it also make me feel sluggish. it does state it contains milk and soy though. so im still unsure if its something in milk or soy that does this or the actual bacteria....

[Advocatus Diaboli]

hazy, do you get similar symptoms from milk, and milk products such as ice cream, etc.? Like albedo intimates in post #150, it may be that you're lactose intolerant--and your symptoms may be suggestive of such. There are a number of different tests that can be helpful in making a diagnosis of lactose intolerance.

[normalizing]

how did lactose intolerant people deal with breast milk as babies?

[Advocatus Diaboli]

@hazy, lactose intolerance can develop later in life.

 

Quote from this article:

 

"Except for very rare instances, every newborn has the ability to make lactase, an enzyme that helps the small intestine digest lactose, the sugar found in milk, says Richard Grand, MD, professor of pediatrics at Harvard"

[normalizing]

well now that is something strange. you are born to tolerate lactose, then some people turn around and cannot. very interesting and im curious to learn as to why this happens

[Darryl]

Lactase "cessation" is the norm, with lactase persistence having evolved at least twice in the past 10k years in human populations with domesticated cows, sheep etc.

 

The "why" undoubtedly has to do with preventing larger, older siblings from taking mother's milk that would better benefit the newborns of the next litter. Imagine the fitness implications if yearlings pushed sibling newborn calves away from their mother's udders.

 

The "how" of lactase persistence in Eurasians is a mutant DNA sequence that encourages binding of transcription factor Oct-1 to the lactase promoter. In humans before cow domestication, only developmental transcription factors active during the first year would bind to this promoter sequence.

Edited by Darryl, 13 August 2017 - 02:48 PM.

[albedo]

Dietary fibre helps ‘good’ bacteria win battle of the microbiome

By Tim Cutcliffe, 14-Aug-2017

Feeding beneficial gut bacteria with fibre appears to help a signalling mechanism which limits the growth of harmful pathogens, according to a new study published in Science.

http://www.nutraingr...-the-microbiome

[normalizing]

i still think fries do have resistant starch or something to feed bacteria because i fart from them as much as i fart from beans

[Iporuru]

i still think fries do have resistant starch or something to feed bacteria because i fart from them as much as i fart from beans

 

Of course they have resistant starch: "Fried potato products, especially French fries, contain more resistant starch than cooked
potatoes. They are also characterized by a higher glycaemic index compared to cooked potatoes"

RESISTANT STARCH – CLASSIFICATION, STRUCTURE, PRODUCTION - Wacław Leszczyński Pol. J. Food Nutr. Sci. 2004, Vol. 13/54, SI 1, pp. 37–50

Attached Files

•  rozdzial3.pdf   94.69KB   4 downloads

[Darryl]

If you really wanted a lot of resistant starch from cooked potatoes, while keeping them healthy, you would boil or steam them in a pressure cooker (15 psi gauge pressure = 250 °F or 121 °C), then allow them to cool slowly overnight, perhaps ending in the refrigerator. This sort of high temperature, then slow decline maximizes starch retrogradation, while boiling/steaming them would prevent them from dessicating.

[normalizing]

or just eat french fries and not feel guilt anymore knowing they are a good source of resistant starch without paying the extra money online for various powders or dealing with chemistry to slowly and painfully cook potatoes and cool them the right way

Edited by hazy, 15 August 2017 - 01:54 AM.

[Darryl]

Peruvians eating traditional boiled potato diets have excellent cardiovascular health. Cultures that chomp on french fries (really an oxidized-fat delivery vehicle) don't. We don't get to benefit from engineering approaches to longevity if we kill ourselves with Western diets. 

 

Seriously though, pressure cookers are a godsend for healthy eating. Put an inch of water in, then your steamer contraption (I like the new silicone ones), throw as many potatoes as you may want that week in, set your burner dial and zero your stopwatch, come back in a hour or so and turn off the stove top, in the morning eat a couple and toss the rest into a bowl in the refrigerator. Each morning pick a couple to warm in the microwave. There's no more than 5 minutes active effort in that timeline, which is less than might be required for a single serving of fries if you have to drive to the restaurant, certainly less than the half hour of cleanup if you ever venture into deep frying at home.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Darryl, 15 August 2017 - 02:12 AM.

[normalizing]

well i mean im not pro potato person in general. from all i have read about them, they raise your blood sugar and im surprised peruvians eating so many potatoes have excellent cardiovascular health, any links to this? from what i gather, its not good to eat potatoes in general if you wanna lose weight or you have high blood sugar

[Iporuru]

Each morning pick a couple to warm in the microwave...

 

Just remember not to warm it above 55^o C because then resistant starch turns into digestible starch again: R. C. Eerlingen and J. A. Delcour: Formation, Analysis, Structure and Properties of Type III Enzyme Resistant Starch, Journal of Cereal Science 22 (1995) 129-138
 

[pamojja]

why do you guys trust these labs so much? im pretty sure we are hardly anywhere in quality when it comes to testing our microbiome and it will take years more for accurate results. from what i gather in the few posts here, it seems bullshit. cant believe nobody else notices this

 

Nevertheless, once this new testing technology get more accurate in a couple of years, it for sure will become very helpful. Thought would share my results, so others thinking about getting it too, can get an accurate idea of what one actually gets.

 

The results themselves are terribly scattered under numerous tabs in one's online ubiome account, and nothing comprehensive to print out to discuss with a health professional. For example, the whole taxonomy tree is a mind-map, where one has to click each node to read futher. Therefore I painfully copy and pasted each bit of info combined into a spreadsheet, which now could also easily be printed out.

 

Omitted are short pop-up descriptions of all prebiotic and some other bacteria, were I only added those for the 2 main - firmicutes and bacteroides - to the intro tab in my spreadsheet. And a in my case useless time-line function for multiple ubiome results.

 

Added last year results of a cultured stuhl test (even less useful than ubiome), short descriptions for my rare and too abundant bacteria, lists of possibly opportunistic or beneficial bacteria by Dr. Grace, and marked those bacteria and predicted metabolic functions most close to mine.

 

https://docs.google....t#gid=368328141

 

To summarize my results again:

 

Body weight bacteria match: Low

Probiotics match: Low

Diversity percentile: 93rd

Wellness match: 96,4%

 

Basically my bacteria aren't those of a skinny person I've been my whole life; despite eating Sauerkraut, yogurt and raw chesses every day my sample contained zero probiotics; and despite having numerous serious health conditions my results greatly overlap with those from individuals who report no ailments and high levels of wellness.

Edited by pamojja, 15 August 2017 - 08:27 PM.

[Darryl]

well i mean im not pro potato person in general. from all i have read about them, they raise your blood sugar and im surprised peruvians eating so many potatoes have excellent cardiovascular health, any links to this? from what i gather, its not good to eat potatoes in general if you wanna lose weight or you have high blood sugar

 

Glucose spikes are a problem for those who are insulin resistant, from obesity, or high saturated fat or added-sugar diets.

 

Given all populations with negligible diabetes risk consume low fat starch based diets, with the Chilean Mapuche people eating a diet centered on potatoes, I think potatoes are exonerated with respect to metabolic disease risk. Unfortunately, I'm unaware of any studies on cardiovascular risk in in traditional societies with white potato centric diets in Peru, Chile, or Bolivia. All societies with negligible ischemic heart disease risk that I'm aware of also consume low fat starch based diets: Tarahumara (corn & beans), Tsimane (rice, plantain, manioc, & corn), Papuan highlanders (sweet potato), Polynesians & Melanesians (sweet potato, breadfruit & taro), rural Chinese (rice, wheat, sorghum), rural Subsaharan Africans (corn, cassava, yams & plantains); so I doubt white potatoes present a risk in themselves, unless deep fried or slathered in fats.

Edited by Darryl, 15 August 2017 - 10:50 PM.

[Darryl]

New study of considerable interest:

 

Chemical Compound That Gives Poop Its Stink Extends Healthy Lifespan in Animals

 

Sonowal et al, 2017. Indoles from commensal bacteria extend healthspan. PNAS. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1706464114

Multiple studies have identified conserved genetic pathways and small molecules associated with extension of lifespan in diverse organisms. However, extending lifespan does not result in concomitant extension in healthspan, defined as the proportion of time that an animal remains healthy and free of age-related infirmities. Rather, mutations that extend lifespan often reduce healthspan and increase frailty. The question arises as to whether factors or mechanisms exist that uncouple these processes and extend healthspan and reduce frailty independent of lifespan. We show that indoles from commensal microbiota extend healthspan of diverse organisms, including Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila melanogaster, and mice, but have a negligible effect on maximal lifespan. Effects of indoles on healthspan in worms and flies depend upon the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR), a conserved detector of xenobiotic small molecules. In C. elegans, indole induces a gene expression profile in aged animals reminiscent of that seen in the young, but which is distinct from that associated with normal aging. Moreover, in older animals, indole induces genes associated with oogenesis and, accordingly, extends fecundity and reproductive span. Together, these data suggest that small molecules related to indole and derived from commensal microbiota act in diverse phyla via conserved molecular pathways to promote healthy aging. These data raise the possibility of developing therapeutics based on microbiota-derived indole or its derivatives to extend healthspan and reduce frailty in humans.

 

[Harkijn]

I wonder if this (also) about indole-3-carbonyl which we find in the Brassica vegetables, where it cooperates with sulforaphane in a beneficial manner.

http://www.pnas.org/...8/21/9543.short

(This type of Indole is also available as a supplement btw)

[Darryl]

Indole-3-carbonyl and related diindolylmethane are also AhR agonists. Cruciferous vegetables with the highest content of precursor glucobrassicin would include watercress, Brussels sprouts, collards, savoy cabbage, and cauliflower. Presuming cleavage by myrosinase is similar to that of glucoraphanin to sulforaphane in broccoli, best availability would be through either consuming raw, non-frozen vegetables, or by adding an alternative source of myrosinase like mustard powder to cooked vegetables.

[normalizing]

well, for me the best way to get and connect and understand my bacteria is happy is through farting. yes, i would eat grains, nuts, fruits  and vegetables and whatever and if i fart, i know they are satisfied. but i did notice this strange trend lately, french fries and beer make me fart more than usual. i guess my bacteria likes these

[Harkijn]

Well, increased flatulence is not always a good thing (think ill prepared beans). It is about the specific gases in the flatus. Fortunately science comes to the rescue for a mere $120    :

https://www.fastcomp...ble-gas-tracker

[ceridwen]

Chocolate makes me fart. I'm trying to keep off it for obvious reasons. Maybe farts indicate allergies. I used to farts a lot much more than 13 times a day. Since I've been ill hardly at all. Though I seem to be pooping MUCH more than usual and the nature of my poops has changed. Would this indicate a problem with the microbiome?

[albedo]

The epigenetic effects of butyrate: potential therapeutic implications for clinical practice

http://www.clinicale...68-7083-4-4.pdf

Rediscovered here on LC.

[normalizing]

ill post this here since its related but its just interesting add on to the topic, nothing breaking but various study on a specific group of people i have heard for the first time now; http://www.npr.org/s...-the-hadza-diet it also includes a silly video i ignored.

 

anyway, only thing that struck me was the picture actually, them eating whole honeycombs. do you guys think this adds a lot of prebiotic material to the bacteria, or what? not that we eat whole honey combs in the west.

[Darryl]

Probably not prebotics, so much as microbiota modulating phenols. The whole honeycomb would presumably include propolis (beeswax + resins from local flora) with a high content of bioactive triterpenoids.

 

Roquetto et al, 2015. Green propolis modulates gut microbiota, reduces endotoxemia and expression of TLR4 pathway in mice fed a high-fat diet. Food Research International, 76, pp.796-803.

Forty male C57BL/6 mice were fed either a standard diet (control), a high-fat (HF) diet, or a high-fat diet supplemented with 0.2% crude propolis (HFP) for 2 or 5 weeks prior to sacrifice. Blood samples were collected for the determination of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and classical biochemical parameters. Expression of the TLR4 pathway in muscle, and DNA sequencing for the 16S rRNA of the gut microbiota were performed. The HF diet increased the proportion of the phylum Firmicutes and inflammatory biomarkers, while supplementation with propolis for five weeks rendered the microbiota profile nearly normal. Consistently with the above, the supplementation reduced levels of circulating LPS and down-regulated the TLR4 pathway and inflammatory cytokine expressions in muscle. Moreover, propolis improved such biochemical parameters as serum triacylglycerols and glucose levels.

[normalizing]

i thought this is an interesting study; https://www.scienced...70825163931.htm

 

any opinions

[albedo]

i thought this is an interesting study; https://www.scienced...70825163931.htm

 

any opinions

 

Indeed interesting, thank you.

 

I have currently no access to the (paywalled) paper but reading the article a first comment is about the balance you would need to strive to between the requirement of a good intake of choline to prevent choline-deficiency induced diseases and the harmful TMAO byproduct-induced diseases (particularly cardiovascular) of choline metabolism by the gut microbiota.

 

I think the study you post might shed light on the identification and modulation of the flora responsible both for the accumulation of TMAO and the risk for the host to be at choline deficiency and makes a good case of the relative epigenetics modifications. Potentially this might led to disease preventative gut microbiota manipulations (pre/pro biotics, fecal transplant, drugs, ... see also Sven's post on LC here)

 

With reference to the required choline intake you might watch biomarkers such as homocysteine, creatine kinase etc and your genotype, e.g. see:

 

Zeisel SH. Nutritional genomics: defining the dietary requirement and effects of choline. J Nutr. 2011;141(3):531-4.

https://www.ncbi.nlm...les/PMC3040911/

 

You might also check the discussion on the Personalized Nutrition thread on LC, here.

[Iporuru]

Numerous uncharacterized and highly divergent microbes which colonize humans are revealed by circulating cell-free DNA

http://www.pnas.org/...1707009114.full

 

"Through massive shotgun sequencing of circulating cell-free DNA from the blood of more than 1,000 independent samples, we identified hundreds of new bacteria and viruses which represent previously unidentified members of the human microbiome. Previous studies targeted specific niches such as feces, skin, or the oral cavity, whereas our approach of using blood effectively enables sampling of the entire body and reveals the colonization of niches which have been previously inaccessible. We were thus able to discover that the human body contains a vast and unexpected diversity of microbes, many of which have highly divergent relationships to the known tree of life."

 

"Human Microbiome Has Been Substantially Undersampled in Previous Studies

The novel sequences indicate that the microbiome’s species richness is much higher than is estimated from known species. If we count all of the taxa the contigs are assigned to, the number of taxa of known and divergent contigs is ∼20% of the total number of species observed in the curated microbiome database. Conservatively counting contigs assigned to higher levels only once (e.g., only count “proteobacteria” once), we observe over 1,000 novel taxa. If the discovery rate is similar to known and divergent contigs, this gives a range of 1,000–5,000 new species (i.e., a 50–250% increase over known species)."

[RWhigham]

A characteristic of bacteria is that they continually swap genetic material among themselves. While an individual bacterium is too small to host anything but a very small genome, by swapping genes our bacteria in aggregate could have a much larger genome than we do.

 

Bacteria that don't permanently colonize us may contribute to the gene pool of those that do.

So a probiotic strain doesn't necessarily have to colonize us to contribute genes that affect our bionome.

Edited by RWhigham, 12 September 2017 - 08:57 PM.