#Microbiotic

[gutfoundation]

What are the Right Probiotic Foods for Your Stomach?

Probiotics, also called good bacteria, are the living microbes that help us maintain healthy bodies if consumed in the right quantities.

[reasonsforhope]

This is maybe an odd thing to put on a good news/reasons for hope blog, but I've also had people tell me that they find this info really, genuinely comforting, so I'm putting it up. Also, further understanding could do a ton to advance medicine, esp. re: allergies, autoimmune diseases, and depression. You can read more about this at the link.

"More than half of your body is not human, say scientists.

Human cells make up only 43% of the body's total cell count. The rest are microscopic [co-contributors].

Understanding this hidden half of ourselves - our microbiome - is rapidly transforming understanding of diseases from allergy to Parkinson's.

The field is even asking questions of what it means to be "human" and is leading to new innovative treatments as a result.

"They are essential to your health," says Prof Ruth Ley, the director of the department of microbiome science at the Max Planck Institute, "your body isn't just you."

No matter how well you wash, nearly every nook and cranny of your body is covered in microscopic creatures.

This includes bacteria, viruses, fungi and archaea (organisms originally misclassified as bacteria). The greatest concentration of this microscopic life is in the dark murky depths of our oxygen-deprived bowels.

Prof Rob Knight, from University of California San Diego, told the BBC: "You're more microbe than you are human."

Originally it was thought our cells were outnumbered 10 to one.

"That's been refined much closer to one-to-one, so the current estimate is you're about 43% human if you're counting up all the cells," he says.

But genetically we're even more outgunned.

The human genome - the full set of genetic instructions for a human being - is made up of 20,000 instructions called genes.

But add all the genes in our microbiome together and the figure comes out between two and 20 million microbial genes.

Prof Sarkis Mazmanian, a microbiologist from Caltech, argues: "We don't have just one genome, the genes of our microbiome present essentially a second genome which augment the activity of our own.

"What makes us human is, in my opinion, the combination of our own DNA, plus the DNA of our gut microbes."

It would be naive to think we carry around so much microbial material without it interacting or having any effect on our bodies at all.

Science is rapidly uncovering the role the microbiome plays in digestion, regulating the immune system, protecting against disease and manufacturing vital vitamins.

Prof Knight said: "We're finding ways that these tiny creatures totally transform our health in ways we never imagined until recently."

It is a new way of thinking about the microbial world. To date, our relationship with microbes has largely been one of warfare.

-via BBC News, April 10, 2018

[delgadomkt]

Microbiot Vault: Cientistas estão criando um banco mundial de fezes na Suíça

Microbiot Vault é um projeto que visa a criação de um banco mundial de fezes, com a preservação das informações da microbiota intestinal, que �� composta por mais de 100 trilhões de bactérias e outros seres microscópicos. Entenda essa proposta inusitada. Desaparecimento silencioso de bactérias Está acontecendo uma emergência global e poucas pessoas estão percebendo: as bactérias estão…

[audreyfoodies]

Transformez votre corps avec le programme Boost

1 Mois pour Perdre du Poids et Réduire l’Inflammation Transformez votre corps avec le programme Boost, une méthode naturelle accompagnée d’un plan nutritionnel ! Pourquoi choisir le programme Boost ? 🌿 Approche 100% naturelle: Des compléments alimentaires Live Clean 🥗 Plan nutritionnel : Un programme alimentaire alcalinisant et anti-inflammatoire 💪 Résultats en 1 mois : Un corps détoxifié, un…

[steph]

TDAH à travers le prisme de l’axe intestin-cerveau (org. Isabelle Massat)

Symposium TDAH, mes petites notes comme je peux, lacunaires et sans doute avec des erreurs et approximations. Des milliers d’articles autour du microbiote! Fascinant car balbutiements de la recherche mais déjà une vision beaucoup plus holistique de la santé mentale. Il faut bien se plonger dedans, car risques d’en rester au superficiel avec petits conseils de nutrition. Les mécanismes…

[pierre-hector]

Alanna Collen, Antibiotiques et Microbiote Intestinal

Rebelote pour une antibiothérapie qui déséquilibre la flore intestinale, des probiotiques qui la rééquilibrent et des fibres qui améliorent le terrain µ-biotique. Les antibiotiques peuvent sauver des vies dans les cas avancés d’infection, certes… mais… autant prendre connaissance de ce qui suit pour se mettre en chemin pour trouver d’autres solutions moins dévastatrices.

« Puisque certain antibiotiques favorisent la prolifération des C. diff [ndr – clostridium difficile], une question se pose : modifient-ils, oui ou non, la composition du microbiote ? Et pour combien de temps ? La plupart de ceux qui prennent des antibiotiques se plaignent de ballonnements et de diarrhées. Il s’agit là des effets secondaires les plus courant de ces médicaments, qui s’expliquent bien entendu par une modification du microbiote – la dysbiose. En général, tout s’arrange quelques jours après l’arrêt du traitement. Mais les microbes qui y ont survécu ? Leurs populations parviennent-elles de nouveau à un équilibre harmonieux pour notre santé ?

Une équipe de chercheurs en Suède s’est posé la question en 2007. Ils s’intéressaient en particulier au sort des bacteroides [lat.], du fait de leur rôle dans la digestion des glucides d’origine végétale et de leur considérable incidence sur le métabolisme de l’homme [...]. La moitié des participants à l’étude tous en parfaite santé ont pris pendant une semaine de la clindamycine et les autres, rien du tout. L’ingestion d’antibiotique a terriblement affecté les microbes intestinaux des volontaires, dès le début du traitement : la diversité de leurs bacteroides, notamment, s’est bien réduite. Les chercheurs ont continué à suivre l’évolution du microbiote des participents à l’étude de longs mois durant, mais même à la fin, les bacteroides du groupe sous clindamycine n’avaient toujours pas retrouvé leurs proportions d’origine. Deux ans après l’arrêt du traitement antibiotique. »

S’en suit un exposé sur la ciprofloxacine, un antibiotique à large spectre prescrit tant en cas d’infection urinaire que de sinusite qui dérègle en moins de trois jours la composition des espèces de l’intestin.

« Même l’incidence du traitement le pluscourt à faible dose se prolonge longtemps après les troubles qui l’ont justifié. Ce n’est pas forcément plus mal me direz-vous : un changement peut aussi se traduire par une amélioration. Songez toutefois à la recrudescence des maladies du XXIe siècle : le diabète de type 1 et la sclérose en plaques dès les années 1950, les allergies et l’autisme dès les années 1940. L’épidémie d’obésité a été attribuée à l’apparition des supermarchés et aux plaisirs de la consommation à outrance à laquelle ils incitent. Mais quand se sont-ils multipliés ? Dans les années 1940 et 1950. Soit à l’époque où Anne Miller a réchappé de justesse à la Grande Faucheuse. Ou encore au moment du Débarquement : c’est à partir de 1944 que l’usage des antibiotiques s’est généralisé. […]

mais pas de conclusion hâtive ! Comme tout bon scientifique s’empresserait de le rappeler : une corrélation n’implique pas forcément un rapport de cause à effet. A priori, l’introduction auprès du grand public des antibiotiques n’a pas plus de relation avec la généralisation des maladies chroniques que l’ouverture des premiers supermarchés en libre service dans les années 1940. La concomitance de deux phénomènes, si elle aiguille sur une piste, ne signifie pas qu’ils sont liés. […]

On sait depuis les années 1950 que les antibiotiques ne favorisent pas seulement le gain de poids des animaux d’élevage mais aussi des êtres humains. […] des médecins pionniers avertis de l’incidence récemment mise en évidence des antibiotiques sur le développement du bétails, en ont par exemple prescrit à des prématurés et à de jeunes enfants souffrant de malnutrition. Les résultats ont été spectaculaires : leurs patients se sont assez remplumés pour échapper à la menace de la mort. Quand on songe toutefois à la quantité d’individus aux kilos superflus de nous jours, peut-être de telles “guérisons” auraient-elles plutôt dû alerter la communauté scientifique. »

Alanna Collen décrit une études faites en 1953 sur les jeunes recrues de la marine US qui mit en évidence que les appelés qui avaient pris de la l’auréomycine avaient pris plus de poids que ceux qui avaient pris un placebo.

« Il y a de quoi s’indigner que [l’] effets [des antibiotiques], pourtant indéniable, sur les animaux et même les être humains, ait été négligé en tant que piste de recherche quand on songe aux proportions acquises par le problème de surpoids. On sait que les antibiotiques font grossir, vu qu’on s’en sert pour accélérer la croissance des animaux d’élevage et remédier aux problèems nutritionnels de ceux d’entre nous qui en ont le plus besoin. Malgré tout, on n’en a pas tenu compte dans le contexte d’un désastre sanitaire à l’échelle mondiale. »

A. Collen présente ensuite des études qui ont permis de mettre en relief certaines souches de bactéries intestinales qui favorisent ou non l’embonpoint.

« Le plus préoccupant, c’est que bien qu’un retour à la normale du microbiote suive l’arrêt du traitement, ses effets sur le métabolisme s’avèrent malgré tout durables. La pénicilline est l’antibiotique le plus communément prescrit aux enfants et, à en juger par l’exemple des souris, son ingestion trop précoce occasionne des changements IRRÉVERSIBLES du métabolisme. […]

depuis 2006, il est interdit aux éleveurs de l’Union européenne d’utiliser des antibiotiques rien que pour augmenter le poids du bétail, même s’ils servent encore à l’occasion à traiter des infections. Aux États-Unis et dans maints autres pays, on continue de gaver les animaux ‘antibiotiques pour qu’ils prennent plus de poids plus vite. »

A. Collen se demande alors dans quelle mesure nous n’ingérons pas de résidus d’antibiotiques à notre insu tant en consommant de la viande qu’en étant végétarien dont les légumes qu’ils consomment risquent fort d’être engraissés par du fumier issu d’animaux ayant reçu des antibiotiques.

Certaines personnes se retrouvent alors dans un tel déséquilibre de leur µ-biote intestinal, en grande souffrance, atteint par une prolifération du clostridium difficile contre lequel aucun antibiotique ne fonctionne, que la seule solution qu’il leur reste proposée par le système de “santé” actuel est le transplantation de selles issues d’un personne en bonne santé. Peu ragoûtant, mais des personnes en grandes souffrance, s’appuyant sur des vidéos Youtube, ont fini par passer les selles de leur conjoint au mixer pour se les injecter ensuite dans le “siphon”, vu qu’on les hôpitaux de leur État leur refusait cette thérapie de la dernière chance. Pour les adultes ce sont les fibres des légumineuses (lentilles, pois cassés, haricots...) qui servent de terrain d’accueil aux bonnes bactéries, aux probiotiques du côlon. Pour le nourrisson, ce sont les oligosaccharides issus du lait maternel.

La suite détaillée dans le livre…

Pour conclure cet exposé succinct, je ne peux que repenser au père d’un ami qui, en fin de vie, fini sa course ici-bas avec un staphylocoque doré contre lequel on ne pouvait rien. On nous parle de bactéries “résistantes” aux antibiotiques… on reste dans la logique de guerre contre le vivant et dans cette logique on préfère les bactéries “collabos”.

‣ Alanna Collen, « Nos amies les bactéries », Poche Marabout, 2015, 409 pages, p. 216-224.

[fitnessmith]

Glucides sans prise de poids : comment les inclure sans grossir

NOUVEAU 👉 Améliorez le métabolisme des graisses et la santé avec ces glucides. #nutrition #santé #gestiondesglucides #antioxydants #antiinflammatoires #pertepoids #métabolisme #régime

Vous en avez assez des régimes compliqués et des solutions inefficaces pour gérer vos glucides ? Vous avez perdu du poids en réduisant vos glucides et vous ne savez pas comment les inclure à nouveau ? Il existe des glucides que vous pouvez consommer tous les jours sans crainte ( et ce ne sont pas des légumes ). Je vais aussi vous expliquer pourquoi les régimes de restriction des calories sur…

[svtturlan]

Le placenta se forme avec l'aide du microbiome de la mère

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03105-3

[amourrencontreseduction]

Découverte des pouvoirs incroyables du corps humain

Le corps humain recèle encore de nombreux mystères qu’il nous reste à découvrir. Voici une belle découverte qui permet de comprendre et de pouvoir obtenir des avancées majeures dans de nombreux troubles et maladies  pouvant nous donner de beaux espoirs. Découvrez le documentaire vidéo gratuit:  en cliquant ici

[gutfoundation]

What are the Right Probiotic Foods for Your Stomach?

Probiotics, also called good bacteria, are the living microbes that help us maintain healthy bodies if consumed in the right quantities.

[rocabalboa]

Video i illustrated about microbiota🦠

[paleo-lifestyle]

Le microbiote intestinal

Votre microbiote intestinal : ce qu'il est, son rôle dans votre santé, et comment l'optimiser pour améliorer votre santé globale.

Le microbiote intestinal est un sujet de plus en plus populaire dans le domaine de la santé. Il s’agit d’un ensemble de micro-organismes qui vivent dans notre intestin et qui jouent un rôle clé pour notre santé. Les études montrent que notre microbiote intestinal a des liens étroits avec notre digestion, notre système immunitaire, notre santé mentale et même avec notre poids. C’est pourquoi il…

[jean-fran-malo]

Ce soir c'était un atelier lactofermentation ! Prendre soin de son microbiote, c'est bon pour notre santé. Découvrir ce qui se passe dans notre flore intestinale, goûter kéfir, kombucha, kimchi, légumes en saumure, chou cru et cuit... partager un bon moment de convivialité, fabriquer ses propres bocaux... tout cela chez Sophie et animé par Florence. Association Ecocliquot, groupe "demain qu'est ce qu'on mange ?". #lactofermentation #kefir #kombucha #kimchi #carotte #radisnoir #saintgenislaval #ecocliquot #microbiote #floreintestinale #yapasdemalasefairedubien (à Saint-Genis-Laval) https://www.instagram.com/p/CnqAVm6oLnE/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[starrysharks]

i know that robopearl is probably just pearl talking through a drone, but i will accept this which is most likely a mistranslation. pearl is so small she can comfortably crawl up in there and pilot it like a microbiotic eva

[bongazo]

Getting tired very easily of the stupidest trends of self hate showing up on my insta feed. For every thick haired girl that talks about whatever stuff hair related there's three or four accounts appearing on my feed ran by influencers hating their thin hair like "oooh as a thin hair girlie I could never!!" "Trying to do the reverse ponytail whatnot but realising I'm not a thick hair girlie"

Everything is appealing to self hate EVERYTHING. Everyday there's something NEW that is WRONG with me : thin hair, eye colour?? Moon face, weak nails, gut microbiote, the I way I've been eating broccoli IT'S EXHAUSTING MY GIRLIES IN CHRIST

Influencers run out of shit to say and the first thing they do is to draw upon self hate discourses CAMOUFLAGED AS SELF IMPROVEMENT TIPS. The lexicon they use is disturbing and very close to doublespeak like "It's not wrong to have a roman nose but here are some tips to style your bangs so you can look like that actress from New Girl" Social media became UNBEARABLE, I'm being constantly bombarded with Cosmopolitan and Vogue editorials about how wrong I'm being a human being! I'm not even interested in being a woman, wtf???!!! I THOUGHT WE WERE PAST THAT

No darling there's nothing wrong nor right having a certain form of eyelids or lips bodies are bodies and that's just it there's nothing inherently WRONG OR RIGHT about them just stupid ideas about what's trendier

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Monopolizing turds

Update 31 May 2023: an earlier edition of this article identified the price of Rebyota as $20,000; this was the rumored price prior to Rebyota’s release in December  2022, when Stephen Skolnick wrote the article I referenced. When Rebyota was actually released in 2023, the average wholesale price (AWP) was $10,800. Thanks to Benjamin Jolley for catching this error, and to Stephen Skolnick for getting to the bottom of it.

It’s been ten years — to the day! — since I first started writing about the bizarre, amazing world of turd transplants, in which a sick person receives a microbiotic infusion in the form of some processed poop from a healthy person:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130608030455/http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2013/05/29/why-diy-fecal-transplants-are-a-thing-and-the-fda-is-only-part-of-the-reason/

Gut biomes are one of those understudied, poorly understood medical areas that are both very promising and also full of sketchy medical claims from “supplement” companies, influencers, quacks and grifters. But in the decade since I first started tracking turd transplants (formally called “Fecal Microbiota Transplants” or FMTs), a growing body of sound science has emerged on the subject.

One thing that’s increasingly undeniable is that the composition of your microbial nation is related in significant ways to both your physical and mental health. What’s more, as antibiotic resistant “super bugs” proliferate, FMTs are becoming increasingly central to treating dangerous gut infections that otherwise stand a high chance of killing you.

“Eat Shit and Prosper” is Stephen Skolnick’s delightfully named newsletter about poop and health science. Skolnick is a physicist by training, but has a long history of collaboration with Openbiome, a nonprofit that coordinates between doctors, patients and donors to provide safe FMTs:

https://stephenskolnick.substack.com/

In an edition of Eat Shit from last December, Skolnick recounts the amazing history and dismaying future of FMTs. In 2013, the FDA announced it would regulate FMTs as “Investigational New Drugs,” which could only be administered as part of a registered clinical trial:

https://stephenskolnick.substack.com/p/a-monopoly-on-poop

At that point, FMTs were already in widespread use by docs to treat otherwise untreatable cases of Clostridioides difficile (C. diff), an antibiotic resistant bacterial infection that literally makes you shit yourself to death. These doctors were in no position to run registered clinical trials, which meant that they would have to stop using the most effective therapy they had for a potentially lethal infection.

Doctors and patients kicked up a fuss, and the FDA walked back its guidance, announcing that it would exercise “discretion” in enforcing its Investigational New Drug rule, giving a pass to docs who were treating C. diff with FMTs:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2013/07/18/2013-17223/guidance-for-industry-enforcement-policy-regarding-investigational-new-drug-requirements-for-use-of

That’s where things have stood for the past decade or so. The “discretion” rule means that patients could still get FMTs, but their insurance wouldn’t cover it. But even if you had cash to pay for an FMT, your doc probably wouldn’t administer it for anything except a C. diff infection, despite the promising signs that FMT can help treat other conditions, and despite the generally safe nature of FMTs.

If your doc did give you an FMT, chances are good that they sourced their poop from Openbiome. Openbiome recruits very healthy people, gets them to poop in a bag, then processes the poop — removing nonbacterial solids, testing it for pathogens, freezing it, portioning it, and sending it to docs. All this is done at cost, and it’s not cheap: $1–2k/treatment, mostly due to cold-chain logistics (the poop is shipped at -80C).

Despite the cost, and despite the limitations on treatment, the Openbiome method has proved very reliable. Indeed, FMTs as a whole are pretty darned safe, with the most common side-effects being transient gas and bloating. In the past decade, there’ve been a total of six “adverse effects” associated with Openbiome’s 5,000+ procedures, all in severely immunocompromised people, and none conclusively linked to the treatment:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016508522003511/pdf

A decade into this system, the FDA has taken the next step forward — only it’s actually a step backwards.

During this intervening decade, a pharma company called Ferring has conducted clinical trials on FMTs and received approval for an FMT product called Rebyota. The process for making Rebyota is effectively identical to the process used by Openbiome: collect poop, remove solids, test for pathogens, add glycerol, freeze and ship.

The main difference between Rebyota and Openbiome’s poop is price. While Openbiome charges $1–2k per treatment, Rebyota charges $10,800

That’s some expensive shit!

Fine. Getting Rebyota through clinical trials means that insurers might start covering it, and perhaps some patients will prefer brand-name poop to open-source poop. But as part of the FDA’s approval of Rebyota, the agency also rescinded its “discretionary enforcement” guidance, making it illegal for docs to source their poop from Openbiome:

https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/enforcement-policy-regarding-investigational-new-drug-requirements-use-fecal-microbiota

For Ferring, this is a monopoly on shit, one that lets them charge patients $10.8k for poop that costs $1–2k to process. The FDA does not claim that this is being done in the name of safety. Instead, an FDA official told Skonick that the goal was to “incentivize innovation without creating an access crisis.”

That is, the FDA changed its guidance and put nonprofit stool banks out of business because it wants to incentivize pharma companies to perform expensive clinical trials, and it believes that these companies won’t pay for trials if they have to compete with the likes of Openbiome, which would make it impossible to charge 900% markups on poop.

Trials are important! Evidence-based medicine is important! But Ferring’s clinical trials didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. FMTs were already the best therapy we had for C. diff. Testing Rebyota against a placebo didn’t tell us anything new — unlike testing Rebyota against the existing therapies, e.g. product from open stool banks.

Such a trial might have given rise to a very different regulatory outcome, because the cure rate reported by Rebyota is much lower than the cure rate from Openbiome’s own interventions:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40265-022-01797-x

That is, using the $1k poop from Openbiome seems to be much more effective than using the $10.8k poop from Ferring. But Openbiome, a nonprofit, hasn’t been able to perform the kind of rigorous — and expensive — clinical trial that Ferring funded.

This points to a significant problem with the FDA’s model. The agency wants good clinical data for the medicines it regulates, as it should, It presumes that the only way to get that data is through granting commercial exclusivity to a for-profit, which ends up costing patients vast sums, and locking many patients out altogether.

This creates all kinds of new dangers. 150,000 people/year in the US contract Recurrent Clostridium difficile Infection (RCdI). FMT increases the cure rate by 20% relative to antibiotics alone. That means that if everyone with RCdI gets a poop transplant, 30,000 extra people will get better. That’s a big number!

For well insured people, Rebyota probably represents a cash-savings — if your insurance covers the $10,800 procedure, you might pay $500 out of pocket, which is far less than the $1–2K you’d pay to get an Openbiome poop transplant. But if you’re uninsured or underinsured, the FDA’s new enforcement rules mean that you’re now on the hook for $10,800.

The FDA did carve out a loophole: if your doc or their hospital are willing to prepare the poop transplant themselves, they can administer that. On the one hand, preparing a poop transplant isn’t that hard — some people do them at home, on their own:

https://web.archive.org/web/20211015060558/https://thepowerofpoop.com/epatients/fecal-transplant-instructions/

But on the other hand, there’s been exactly one death conclusively linked to FMT, and it was from one of these hospital-prepared transplants (the patient had just had a marrow transplant for cancer that wiped out their immune system, and the donor had a novel pathogen that the hospital failed to test for).

So the FDA has created a situation where, if you can’t afford a $10,800 proprietary formulation, your only option is to convince your doc or hospital to prepare their own poop transplant, which will cost less than the $10.8k for Rebyota, but more than the $1–2k from Openbiome, which has all kinds of economies of scale. And if you do manage it, you’ll be getting a procedure that has a much worse safety track-record than the Openbiome process that the FDA just killed.

The FDA has an important role to play here, but as with so many policy questions, how the FDA plays that role depends on things that are far upstream from the agency and its decisions. The choice to fund medical trials through the promise of exclusivity — and with it, extremely high margins — puts the FDA in the position of choosing winners in the marketplace: Ferring wins, Openbiome loses.

Ironically, this is the thing that exclusivity is supposed to prevent. By using profit to incentivize medical research, the FDA is supposed to be recruiting the Invisible Hand as its partner in regulation. But exclusivity is incompatible with the idea of medicine as a public good. The tens (hundreds) of millions that Americans will pay for $10.8k poop transplants from Ferring will add up to far more than it would cost to underwrite clinical trials for an open process like Openbiome’s.

The result: both Americans’ wallets and Americans’ guts suffer.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Hay-on-Wye, Oxford, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/29/oh-shit/#rebyota

[Image ID: A poop emoji wearing a top hat and a monocle, posed against a backdrop of e coli bacteria seen through a high-resolution microscope.]