LeafsFan said...
Another interesting Study Oligodar.
VanJordan, I just screenshotted your post. I was reading a bit about that the other day. I'm really happy that studies into diet are finally being done, and shared on places like this forum. A huge change from "diet has no effect".
I would never suggest diet as a cure, but complimentary to treatment, I have to (want to) believe it would be beneficial.
Can I ask - you say "Avoiding animal products starves the proteobacteria, which all have high levels of lipopolysaccharide in their cell wall. When they die, the LPS is released and damages the colon wall." I'm just wondering then, do we want these bacteria to die? Or if they die, is what they release damaging to us.
We are just scratching the surface, but if we don't keep trying, we'll never know and it'll be the next generation reaping the benefits. Why not us?
To answer your question about
LPS bacteria. We will always have them in our gut. E. coli are natural inhabitants. The key is their numbers. If their numbers are high then more of them are dying on a regular basis, releasing more LPS, and doing more damage. They also feed on protein, specifically animal protein because it's high in the sulfur based amino acids cysteine and methionine. As their LPS damages the gut wall, leaky gut begins, and then the immune system starts migrating into the colon wall and causes inflammation. If the proteobacteria are overpopulated, they must absolutely be scaled back, but the protocol for doing it must be gradual. If you nuke the bowel with antibiotics, the colonic inflammation explodes because of all the LPS release. This is why antibiotics are so bad for most people with UC. They already have dysbiosis and too much proteobacteria. Then you nuke the biome with an antibiotic, all the LPS is released, the bowel wall gets more leaky, and all the good bacteria are now dead so the proteobacteria can freely populate even worse than before.
Diet is a big part of the picture, but until the gut mapping technologies recently got really good, nobody knew what they were targeting with diet. Different diets (SCD, GAPS, etc.) work differently for different people because we all have different ratios of microbial communities. Some of us have overgrowths, or undergrowths; some of us have species that are totally extinct for various reasons (like antibiotics). Until a person knows their bacterial community with precision, it's impossible to know the right things to do. You can chase your tail for years not knowing. However, one feature is universal to UC patients: we all have high proteobacteria numbers. It's because when we start bleeding, the proteobacteria feed on the blood, and multiply. Then they release more LPS and it causes more inflammation.
Diet isn't the whole picture though. Some of the dysbiosis will not change from food modification. You need targeted antimicrobials to kill off certain populations because they won't die back on their own -- they are very resilient. Other species need to be fed with prebiotic foods so that they grow and take up all the real estate, so that the pathobionts and dysbiotic bacteria can't grow in their place. Modern medicine will never look at this because the main method for scaling back these bacteria is herbal. You can literally choose one herb that only targets one bacteria. Antibiotics can't do that. Modern medicine hates herbal medicine, so unless they develop some kind of amazing genetic technology, or start using bacteriophages, they will never be able to customize a gut treatment protocol for people based on their biome mapping.
We are just scratching the surface, but honestly the majority of this work is not being done by mainstream modern medicine. It's being done by independent GI doctors and researchers, microbiologists and geneticists, and the alternative health sector. Mainstream modern medicine is still pushing the auto-immune angle and immune suppression -- they will never cure us because their model is too profitable. They come out with a new, slightly different biologic every 2-5 years, just in time for patients whose biologic options are wearing off. I know people whose insurance pays out over $100K per year for their biologic treatment. Big pharma is not going to stop that pathway, and big pharma owns modern medicine, so modern medicine will keep "treating" UC this way.
I gave up on modern medicine a long time ago. I'd maybe turn to them if I was dying, but that's it. Their way of seeing the body makes no sense and they are dismissive of all the new emerging research coming out around the world. Specifically, Australia and NZ are pretty ahead of the game on this one. Big pharma is just too powerful in North America and Europe. There is so much political interference blocking new innovations and experiments. The most promising thing in Europe right now is the Crohn's MAP vaccine. They are entering phase II trials now I believe, all through independent funding. No pharma institution would fund them, probably because if the MAP vaccine works it will cure people.
IBD rates are skyrocketing around the world. It gets worse each year. This is not "auto-immune" and it's not genetics. Something is seriously wrong in our environment and it's reflected in our gut biome community.
By the way, everything I've said in this post is based on empirical research. If you google UC and proteobacteria or LPS you will find lots of data.
Post Edited (VanJordan) : 4/16/2021 10:22:12 AM (GMT-6)