4 ms·

Ya sorry, it's a relatively new concept: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/319593.php https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/319593.php My feeling

Ya sorry, it's a relatively new concept: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/319593.php https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/319593.php My feeling is that it's similar to how allergies/cancer/etc often have 2 or more triggers that must coincide to set off the condition. So for example, maybe people who wouldn't typically have gluten sensitivity (a lectin), ended up with it because they distrupted their gut flora by eating, say, the glyphosate in oats (especially processed oats like Cheerios). It could also happen if they eat compounds not typically encountered in nature, like those present in GMO foods. Western medicine has a blind spot when it comes to these holistic effects because it tends to mainly study single root causes and cures. We also don't yet have enough long term studies, because GMOs only went mainstream around the late 90s and we're only just today able to start tackling big data with machine learning. But many people were wary of herbacides, pesticides and GMOs because there were no long term studies yet. Unfortunately a lot of unscientific practices got rammed to market during the George W Bush years, and during the dot com boom years before that under Clinton where money trumped public health concerns. Ok and really all through the 80s as well... For anyone who reads this, and especially vegetarians dealing with IBS, what really helped me was the glutamine powder you buy at any workout supplement shop. Then I laid off legumes and nightshades (especially peanuts and peppers) for 6 months to let my gut rebuild. Use a pressure cooker to break down the lectins in beans, and also try de-husked grains like white rice instead of brown rice, or say sourdough bread over whole wheat bread. Then be aware that the gut is always breaking down and rebuilding, so treat it maybe like red meat or alcohol and try limiting yourself to a day or two of beans/salsa in a row instead of eating them every day. Also the Gundry ProPlant protein powder (hemp, flax, spirulina) helped me. If you're under 40 and don't yet have IBS, you might be seeing other symptoms like puffyiness, weight gain and lethargy that feels kind of like chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia. For me, that coincided with discovering I had sleep apnea. I had been chronically tired for as long as a decade.

intopieces 7y ago
While I don’t doubt your story and haven’t read your link, what is interesting to me is that I have been a vegetarian for 13 years haven’t had any of these symptoms. What explains the variation here?
- losteric 7y ago
  Gut flora - you likely have a healthier microbiome, or at least one that was able to adapt to a vegetarian diet. Microbiome variance is a relatively new area of research but studies have already highlighted links to IBS/IBD, autoimmune conditions, and psychological conditions.
DangitBobby 7y ago
This is very interesting... I am a vegetarian who has been eating a ton of legumes the past few days and I've been having a bout of what I suspect is IBS. I should cut back on peanuts and see how it goes. Coincidentally, I also had sleep apnea at one point, though exercise exercise (very minor weight loss) made it go away.
- johnsimer 7y ago
  Peanuts have mold which can lead to candida infections. My nutritionist says to avoid peanuts altogether
odyssey7 7y ago
Emulsifiers are also being investigated for causing issues like that. I find them to be a more compelling explanation for rising rates of these issues. A lot of specialty vegan and dairy-free products are filled with them to turn plant-based ingredients creamy or milky. They're also very common in non-specialty processed foods that many vegetarians eat more of than omnivores. News article: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-emulsifiers/study-links-common-food-additives-to-crohns-disease-colitis-idUSKBN0LT26S20150225 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-emulsifiers/study... The study: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14232 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14232
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dsalso 7y ago
Yes, I think sometimes the reductionist approach misses a lot of context. Regarding your beans example of the pressure cooker, people in my family always let beans soak in water which is then discarded. I think this kind of tradition had a function --> for example, remove the excess lectins. Can glutamine be vegetarian sourced?
robocat 7y ago
> ended up with it because they distrupted their gut flora by eating, say, the glyphosate in oats This sounds wrong. Glyphosate targets an enzyme in plants. The residual levels in human food are extremely low, so why do you think those levels would affect our gut biome? I found a relevant paper: "administered at up to fifty times the established European Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI = 0.5 mg/kg body weight) had very limited effects on bacterial community composition in Sprague Dawley rats" from paper titled "Glyphosate has limited short-term effects on commensal bacterial community composition in the gut environment due to sufficient aromatic amino acid levels": https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749117328099 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026974911... Can you refer to any papers that contradicts that? Edit: I just read your first link on lectins: maybe Gundry has a point, but the crass commercialisation ("Dr. Gundry developed that are sold under the GundryMD brand", affiliate links to Amazon) of that article really detracts from it. It seems obvious to me problems with lectins could only affect a small percentage of people, given that the foods Gundry says to avoid are eaten commonly or staples in some populations for a long time. Note I very strongly agree that we should try a variety of different solutions to health issues (kinda scientific but not!), and I admire that you have found something that is helping you. I do dislike prosyletising of information without balance, and some of what you say is veering towards misinformation IMHO. Edit 2: For completeness: some bacteria do have the enzyme affected by Glyphosate, which has been investigated to see if it affects bees via their gut biome. And the paper showed an effect on gut bacteria with 50x legal dosage if there were insufficient aromatic amino acid levels. The question is: does the maximum legal dosage affect the gut biome enough to be a problem? Given the crap our gut biome handles, and the fact it is a breeding ecology, I am sceptical.
205guy 7y ago
Another possible mechanism that I have heard of are dough conditioners. They make bread soft and fluffy without the need for cultures or letting the bread rise. But bread cultures (such as sourdough starter) feed on the gluten (and make gas bubbles) during natural bread rising. So the gluten doesn't get broken down in "commercial" bread the way it does in "artisan" bread (in quotes because those are two broad categories). So we end up eating lots and lots of gluten in a way that our ancestors didn't.
windexh8er 7y ago
This sounds like the shaky basis presented in "The Plant Paradox". [0] [1] [0] https://www.livescience.com/62914-what-are-lectins-plant-paradox.html https://www.livescience.com/62914-what-are-lectins-plant-par... [1] https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-weight-loss-on-the-plant-paradox-diet-is-itself-a-paradox/ https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-weight-loss-on-the-pl...
zaarn 7y ago
GMOs don't really contain any unnatural substances unless they've been deliberately put in, to my knowledge, that's not many, most GMOs that contain additional substances contain natural substances since it's easier to copy an existing gene than making a new one. To my knowledge, pesticides and glyphosate in the levels present in most food don't really have any effect on our internal microbiome, which is mainly non-plant based and the few plant based single-cellers in that biome aren't that harmed by glyphosate and should quickly develop immunity.

intopieces 7y ago

While I don’t doubt your story and haven’t read your link, what is interesting to me is that I have been a vegetarian for 13 years haven’t had any of these symptoms. What explains the variation here?

losteric 7y ago
Gut flora - you likely have a healthier microbiome, or at least one that was able to adapt to a vegetarian diet. Microbiome variance is a relatively new area of research but studies have already highlighted links to IBS/IBD, autoimmune conditions, and psychological conditions.

DangitBobby 7y ago

This is very interesting... I am a vegetarian who has been eating a ton of legumes the past few days and I've been having a bout of what I suspect is IBS. I should cut back on peanuts and see how it goes. Coincidentally, I also had sleep apnea at one point, though exercise exercise (very minor weight loss) made it go away.

johnsimer 7y ago
Peanuts have mold which can lead to candida infections. My nutritionist says to avoid peanuts altogether

odyssey7 7y ago

Emulsifiers are also being investigated for causing issues like that. I find them to be a more compelling explanation for rising rates of these issues. A lot of specialty vegan and dairy-free products are filled with them to turn plant-based ingredients creamy or milky. They're also very common in non-specialty processed foods that many vegetarians eat more of than omnivores. News article: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-emulsifiers/study-links-common-food-additives-to-crohns-disease-colitis-idUSKBN0LT26S20150225 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-emulsifiers/study... The study: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14232 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14232

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

dsalso 7y ago

Yes, I think sometimes the reductionist approach misses a lot of context. Regarding your beans example of the pressure cooker, people in my family always let beans soak in water which is then discarded. I think this kind of tradition had a function --> for example, remove the excess lectins. Can glutamine be vegetarian sourced?

robocat 7y ago

> ended up with it because they distrupted their gut flora by eating, say, the glyphosate in oats This sounds wrong. Glyphosate targets an enzyme in plants. The residual levels in human food are extremely low, so why do you think those levels would affect our gut biome? I found a relevant paper: "administered at up to fifty times the established European Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI = 0.5 mg/kg body weight) had very limited effects on bacterial community composition in Sprague Dawley rats" from paper titled "Glyphosate has limited short-term effects on commensal bacterial community composition in the gut environment due to sufficient aromatic amino acid levels": https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749117328099 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026974911... Can you refer to any papers that contradicts that? Edit: I just read your first link on lectins: maybe Gundry has a point, but the crass commercialisation ("Dr. Gundry developed that are sold under the GundryMD brand", affiliate links to Amazon) of that article really detracts from it. It seems obvious to me problems with lectins could only affect a small percentage of people, given that the foods Gundry says to avoid are eaten commonly or staples in some populations for a long time. Note I very strongly agree that we should try a variety of different solutions to health issues (kinda scientific but not!), and I admire that you have found something that is helping you. I do dislike prosyletising of information without balance, and some of what you say is veering towards misinformation IMHO. Edit 2: For completeness: some bacteria do have the enzyme affected by Glyphosate, which has been investigated to see if it affects bees via their gut biome. And the paper showed an effect on gut bacteria with 50x legal dosage if there were insufficient aromatic amino acid levels. The question is: does the maximum legal dosage affect the gut biome enough to be a problem? Given the crap our gut biome handles, and the fact it is a breeding ecology, I am sceptical.

205guy 7y ago

Another possible mechanism that I have heard of are dough conditioners. They make bread soft and fluffy without the need for cultures or letting the bread rise. But bread cultures (such as sourdough starter) feed on the gluten (and make gas bubbles) during natural bread rising. So the gluten doesn't get broken down in "commercial" bread the way it does in "artisan" bread (in quotes because those are two broad categories). So we end up eating lots and lots of gluten in a way that our ancestors didn't.

windexh8er 7y ago

This sounds like the shaky basis presented in "The Plant Paradox". [0] [1] [0] https://www.livescience.com/62914-what-are-lectins-plant-paradox.html https://www.livescience.com/62914-what-are-lectins-plant-par... [1] https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-weight-loss-on-the-plant-paradox-diet-is-itself-a-paradox/ https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-weight-loss-on-the-pl...

zaarn 7y ago

GMOs don't really contain any unnatural substances unless they've been deliberately put in, to my knowledge, that's not many, most GMOs that contain additional substances contain natural substances since it's easier to copy an existing gene than making a new one. To my knowledge, pesticides and glyphosate in the levels present in most food don't really have any effect on our internal microbiome, which is mainly non-plant based and the few plant based single-cellers in that biome aren't that harmed by glyphosate and should quickly develop immunity.