Could the cause of UC be a pathogenic nanobacteria biofilm?

There is a lot of research right on microbiome and I know many people have seen the gut tests and perhaps experimented with different probiotics. The other day I read some VERY interesting research that bacterial biofilms have been found in many gastrointestinal diseases. Biofilms are kind of like bacterial communities that secrete calcium and phosphate and other compounds to attach themselves to tissue and protect themselves from the immune systems. They are very microscopic and cannot be seen by doctors and modern testing.

What do people think on this? It is my feeling that UC is caused by either (1) a nanobacterial/biofilm infection too microscopic to be seen or (2) a lack of certain beneficial bacteria that have been eroded due to poor dietary habits - what do you all think?

Got a link to that? Yeah a lot of interest in immune-resistant bacterium, MAP is another one that is an area of focus of research for Crohn's disease specifically. I hope they;re getting close, but a bit pragmatic in it all as there have been so many promising but ultimately dead-ends in the past.

Very interesting! I have found that carrageenan and xanathan gum (Both food additives and polysaccharides) immediately cause me to flare, or at least get rectal bleeding, within 24 hours. Every single time. Initially I thought maybe these food additive emulsifiers were irritating the GI track or perhaps the immune system saw them as invaders, but now I wonder - maybe they are enhancing an already present pathogenic bacterial biofilm?

IamCurious said...
Old Mike has researched this and here are some of the links he found for biofilms and maltodextrin. I believe titanium dioxide also is a problem. But for me what is most important is what I see with my own eyes, and additives such as maltodextrin have caused problems for me more than once.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc4133521/
Maltodextrin, a polysaccharide derived from starch hydrolysis that is used as food additive, has been shown to markedly enhance AIEC biofilm formation and adhesion to intestinal epithelial cells and macrophages. Maltodextrin favors type 1 pili expression, which is required for biofilm formation and adhesion.

https://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/05/21/could-compound-in-artificial-sweeteners-worsen-crohns-disease
Researchers then repeated the experiments, culturing E. coli with maltodextrin alone, and the same sticky biofilm formed.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25000398
The dietary polysaccharide maltodextrin promotes Salmonella survival and mucosal colonization in mice.

https://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=38&m=3347888

And yet a lot of us are fine with those food additives so what does that mean for us?

And yet a lot of us are fine with smoking since most smokers do not get cancer.

Why do you insist that carrageenan doesn't cause UC when there is ample evidence that it can trigger the disease and not just in mice.

Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine by Michael Murray and Joseph Pizzorno, page 593:
"Researchers investigating ulcerative colitis often use carrageenan (a compound extracted from red seaweeds) to experimentally induce the disease in animals. In the initial experiments reported by Marcus and Watt in 1969, one-percent and five-percent carrageenan solutions were provided as the exclusive source of oral fluids for guinea pigs. Over a period of several days, the animals lost weight, developed anemia, had bloody diarrhea, and developed ulcerative colitis. These results have since been confirmed by numerous investigators and in studies involving diverse animal species, including primates."

So Ambling, that reference wasn't rigorous enough for you?
How about this study published in 2017 from the National Library of Medicine in the government's National Institute of Health:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28778519
[i}ALL carrageenans significantly decreased the abundance of a potent anti-inflammatory bacterium, Akkermansia muciniphila, in the gut, which is highly relevant for understanding the toxic effect of carrageenan.
Altogether, our results corroborate previous studies demonstrating harmful gastrointestinal effect of carrageenan and, from a gut microbiota perspective, shed new light into the mechanism by which carrageenan induces colitis in experimental animals.

Post Edited (IamCurious) : 1/3/2020 6:34:09 AM (GMT-7)

Whether you like Natural Medicine or not, nevertheless it is citing rigorous experiments from Marcus and Watt, with results duplicated by others, that carrageenan induces ulcerative colitis in other animals besides mice.

That is the same specious reasoning used by Big Tobacco to explain away all those studies showing that smoking caused cancer.

Happy New Year, best wishes and love to all! Oh wait... is this not the right thread...?

I’m not informed enough to comment on your no 1 point, but on your point 2- my whole family have been consuming the same food for decades and I’m the only one who has UC. I’m not sure it can be put down to diet as why wouldn’t we all have it if we are eating the same meals? Personally I’ve not found a link to diet and uc yet.

Curious Crapper said...
I would like to see a trial where participants are given a one week course of triple antibiotic therapy followed by a fecal matter transplant.

A quick search on HW (search=Borody) will bring up literally dozens of threads referring to Dr Thomas Borody. He is practicing in Australia with a protocol of triple antibiotic therapy followed by a fecal transplant applied via colonoscopy.

Apparently he claims a very high success rate.

They know the cause of UC they just make too much money off of it. The truth is out there and if you find it can get yourself into remission, but never expect the mainstream GI community to ever adopt any of it. They are trained to pitch big pharma and big pharma knows the value of sick care.

I think UC is caused by microbes. It has to be. Either dysbiosis of native gut community or some kind of pathogen that is hard to detect. My sister has Lyme disease and has done so much research on things like Lyme, bartonella, mycoplasma, mycobacteria. They are all VERY hard to detect with standard tests and even harder to get rid of. Lyme disease is going to be the major infection of the future. Modern medicine can already barely deal with it. Makes you wonder what else is out there that they can't deal with.

I looked up the MAP research and it has taken them 10+ years to even develop a single test to find MAP in the blood, and it takes 1 month of culturing your blood to find it.

These microbes are really tricky. I think auto-immune is a BS diagnosis. The body doesn't attack itself for no reason. It's attacking something that is super strong and can't be defeated by the immune system. One day they will understand it. In the mean time they will keep suppressing our immune systems under the dumb idea that our bodies just attack themselves for no reason.

I pray for the cure! Maybe in the decades to come they will figure it out. One thing's for sure, don't expect big pharma to figure it out. It will be independent researchers like the Crohn's MAP people who raise money independently who figure it out. Always donate your money people to like them, and not the UC foundations who take your money and give it right to big pharma!

ausruby said...
I’m not informed enough to comment on your no 1 point, but on your point 2- my whole family have been consuming the same food for decades and I’m the only one who has UC. I’m not sure it can be put down to diet as why wouldn’t we all have it if we are eating the same meals? Personally I’ve not found a link to diet and uc yet.

You have a different microbiome and different genes from your family members, which could react differently to the same food that is ingested.