Update

Since Chicken had the post about resistant starches, I thought I'd give an update. I've got a lot going on these days and haven't been reading any research in over a month, but I am still doing experiments. The one I'm doing now happens to be on unmodified potato starch. I started using 4 grams of unmodified potato starch daily almost 2 weeks ago. The plan is to continue until I can up the dose and not have adverse effects. As mentioned, the starch does increase gas and has my stomach rumbling.

My thoughts:

Studies show that inulin containing products increase bifidobacterium levels. My current belief is that all Lyme patients have decreased bifidobacterium levels. When studying the hypothetical negative influence of acquiring borrelia bacteria, the research directed me to alterations in GI flora as being one of, if not the main cause of Lyme Disease. In a nut shell, our immune response fights so hard against borrelia that the GI bacteria/pathogens can't be controlled or even contained. They are a major problem and unless borrelia is greatly reduced, they will remain a problem.

My observations so far is that I've lost a few pounds, my bowel habits have changed, and after 2 weeks, the gas build up is less than at the onset of the experiment but not low enough to increase to 6 grams per day. I am sleeping less, have more oxidative stress than before, my back hurts more, my feet hurt more, and my cuticle hygiene has deteriorated. This was somewhat expected as my body has down regulated many inflammatory systems. As my bifidobacterium levels increase, so does my immune response. I can do the same thing by taking vitamins.

This leads to an important question. When we are hungry, are we hungry because our bodily processes need the nutrients or calories or because the bacteria in our GI tract need nutrients for energy. Many of us have fat stores and our energy can come from that. I'm beginning to lean towards our bacteria need the energy.

Cultivating beneficial bacteria by fertilizing them with helpful nutrients along with introducing beneficial bacteria through proper dietary intake is something I have been focused on. We'll see....

Fascinating! I know that "cravings" can be our body's way of saying it wants a particular nutrient. I certainly did crave roast beef when I was pregnant. And then later in the pregnancy I craved carrots. Who the heck craves carrots??

I have heard of many candida patients that crave sugar items. This would definitely serve the candida well.

Please keep us posted.

As an aside, I sure did crave potatoes with lyme. I generally baked them, only put kerrygold butter on them with about 4-5 chopped cloves of garlic. My stomach was very rumbly and I was gassy trying to adjust to the garlic but now that amount of garlic is a non problem.

Been waiting to read this and seemed the server went down or it was something on my end and I couldn't access it. Good stuff as always, GH!

Yes, GH we will see...

A recent in situ study (April 2017) that takes a closer look into gut micro biome supports some of Georgia Hunter's detailed findings with Resistant starch and bifidobacterium.

/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5386278/

On a side note I have someone visiting tomorrow for I don't know how long. I will try to keep up with the goings on here but my participation at that time may be limited for a while, but I hope not. If so I will request that someone bring me up to date on the highlights upon return.

wooahh - this sounds very interesting!
I've been away - can someone please link to the initial discussion thread? Thanks!

-p

Someone stepped over the line talking about candida on Facebook the other day and I had to correct them. In a way, it pertains to this thread. Here was my post:

Matt Adcock I have to respectfully disagree with you Laurel Mason. Candida is often found in the stomach and Wiesner and Jechorek published an article in 2000 that states "Interestingly, the numbers of candida recovered from the stomach were typically similar to the relatively high numbers recovered from the lower small intestine or cecum." As a pharmacist, researcher, and former Lyme sufferer, I have spent years researching these diseases and candida is a very opportunistic pathogen. Mentioned by Selitrennikoff in 1998 and Bennett in 2009, these articles describe how the various species of candida can be very problematic in individuals without immunocompromised conditions. There is a synergistic effect between candida and many bacteria that mutually benefits both species. I can provide references upon request. I'm not sure there are many "normal" people these days as the effects of our environment and food supply have altered our flora beyond what we need to be healthy. I could type on this for a long time and probably bore you with facts, but I'll leave it here. Glucose does have a huge impact on candida gene regulation and they do ferment glucose to ethanol.

Psilociraptor said...
Interesting. My stool cultures never showed any sort of anomaly aside from a huge overexpression of E coli. I mean i'm sure there was more wrong with it. But as far as the cultivable "good" organisms i was mostly on the high end of everything.

This topic is limited by science. We do not know all of the many bacteria and pathogens present and only look for what we know about. It is what they are not looking for that cause the problems. Also, being high on "good" organisms can be a bad thing for some people. If you are high on one bacteria, that means it is taking the place of something else. No one can say what level is appropriate for any one individual. A high level for you may be a low level for me. Since we are all different, they use averages to determine the appropriate amount of bacteria in their tests. One fact is certain. If we have a chronic illness like Lyme Disease, our mircobiome will be skewed and that begins in the GI tract.