17 ms·

Microbial ecosystems in the mouth and gut are linked to many ills

304 points by aluket 6y ago

dekken_ 6y ago
https://outline.com/TtrWGF https://outline.com/TtrWGF
pazimzadeh 6y ago
> Dr Sampson has tested this hypothesis in mice. He bred a strain of E. coli that cannot make Curli and injected mice with it, while injecting others with unmodified bacteria. Those that received Curli-producing bacteria expressed higher levels of synuclein and demonstrated symptoms like involuntary rigidity which, when seen in people, are associated with Parkinson’s disease. That is tantalising. These mice were mono-colonized with E. coli, whereas both mice and humans normally have a diverse gut flora. I colonize mice with E. coli containing curli all the time and the mice do not exhibit any rigidity or symptoms of Parkinson's. So it's interesting but not quite as huge of an effect as you might think, unless your microbial flora is really disrupted. May be relevant if you have an antibiotic resistant strain of E. coli blooming in your intestine following antibiotic treatment/some other disruption of your microbiota. A gut bacterial amyloid promotes α-synuclein aggregation and motor impairment in mice https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7012599/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7012599/
- boplicity 6y ago
  As someone with IBD, I really wish the hard science about bacteria would start to filter into actual treatments. I know there are possibilities there, and many patients have found avenues of success, but there is so much guesswork involved that it is very frustrating. Hopefully there will be definitive answers in the future. My gastroenterologist, who has quite a lot of training from very good schools, has absolutely nothing useful to say, in terms of the microbiome.
  - throw345hn 6y ago
    As someone with IBS, totally agree with you. I wish the research would trickle down into actual treatments. I have started following a lot of research about gut etc but very little of it leads to something that can mass consumed. I spent thousands of dollars on trying out medications, tests, visiting a number of highly trained doctors etc, nothing came up in tests and at the end almost all doctors threw their hands up and categorized my gut issues as IBS which is just a catchAll term for which there is no specific treatment other than trying out a number of things.
    - fodmap 6y ago
      Fellow IBS sufferer here. I understand and share your pain. There isn't any magic pill yet but until someone invents it I can tell you I've found great comfort following the FODMAP diet. I've wasted ten horrible years until I discovered that Monash University diet. Ten years of pain and expending. Hoping it can help you as well https://www.monashfodmap.com/ https://www.monashfodmap.com/
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - jodrellblank 6y ago
        (I didn't downvote). For comparison, imagine you signed up with the username "Oracle" and posted "Fellow data storage sufferer here. I understand and share your pain. There isn't any magic pill yet but until someone invents it I can tell you I've found great comfort using the Oracle database" and a link to a "purchase Oracle" page. You might be a well-meaning person, but you're hard to distinguish from a bot pushing a fad diet with online courses, a for-pay app, a shop, "find a dietician" services, certifications, etc. Preying on offering hope to the sick and desperate is common and people are cynical and wary of it, and even genuine well-meaning people are prone to sharing dubious alternative medicine suggestions which they honestly believe help but aren't proven to do anything more than the placebo effect. If you were a long-standing HN commentor, you'd probably get more benefit of the doubt; signing up as "fodmap" to link to an apparently for-profit fodmap service with an emotional message makes it easy to assume bad faith astroturfing at a glance - focused username, commercial link, fringe/alternative/woo treatment, claims of health cure for incurable condition, SEO style message ("As a fellow sufferer, believe me, I know, I've been there, trust me, just one easy credit card payment"). [I wrote this for your deleted comment;]
echelon 6y ago
As a layman, this is so exciting! It feels as though we may be getting closer to finding a cause for a diverse set of neurodegenerative disorders. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, etc. Gut and oral microbiota having influence across the blood-brain barrier seems so plausible. If they get into the nervous system and migrate, they could cause inflammation in the brain leading to damage over time. The immune system is incredible, and we'll no doubt find it a fertile ground for progress against a lot of diseases.
- wyldfire 6y ago
  Do we know whether these microbes are cause or effect? On the bright side I'd say even if they're [only] an effect of those illnesses, we'd have an excellent opportunity for earlier diagnosis.
andrewzah 6y ago
This is something that I've been thinking about lately. Last ~May, I spontaneously developed rashes exactly in the middle of the back of my hands at the same time. This lead to skin sensitivity and ultimately skin rashes across my body. At this point I've visited my dermatologist what, 20 times? In addition to my general physician, bloodwork, etc. Biopsies and bloodwork and other tests don't show anything abnormal, asides from excessively high IgE - 600 and now about 1,000. I recently started on Dupixent but it's too early to tell if it's helping or not. There doesn't seem to be any clear indicator, so I'm wondering if I ate something + stress, which affected my gut microbiome. My family has no history of this sort of issue and it seriously started about overnight.
- tnayrb 6y ago
  I'm no expert, but something similar happened to me a few years back. The conclusion was an allergic reaction to the sun...
  - andrewzah 6y ago
    Did it go away on its own?
    - aedocw 6y ago
      I can't confirm today because it's very overcast, but as of a few days ago the sun had still not gone away.
      - andrewzah 6y ago
        I know you're joking, but this is a horrible condition. While researching I've seen some anecdotal stories about the condition just... clearing up after a while for some people, so hence my question.
        joshspankit 6y ago
        I’m suspicious that your reply may also have a joke embedded in it...
bigmattystyles 6y ago
Completely anecdotal, personal experience. It wasn't Accutane but when I was a pimply teen, in an effort to remedy the acne, I was prescribed doxycycline and another topical antibacterial ointment; in any case, I never had heartburn or experienced depression prior to that but a few months after starting those meds, both started. It's likely unrelated but whenever I read how crucial biomes are - I can't help but wonder. For the record, I preferred the acne.
- gr1zzlybe4r 6y ago
  Anecdotally I wonder about this sometimes too. I took Accutane mostly because I had a parent that really drove me to take it (I think projecting some of their own issues with acne onto my completely normal amount of teenage acne) and I definitely feel like it changed my mood during and after taking it. I didn't drink at all on it either. It's a drug that you shouldn't be able to have a teenager take unless it's approved by a panel of dermatologists or something. I had no idea of the severity of the side effects from it when I took it.
  - fraudsyndrome 6y ago
    I took this when I was a teenager too, acne was horrible even with a proper skincare routine. Getting access to Accutane was easy, only took 1 session with a Dermatologist who asked me basic questions on what my routine was. In hindsight I wonder if this should have been harder to access. Of course it worked and I feel like I gotboff relatively lucky with the side-effects. One benefit was dry(er) skin/hair, which sounds bad but oily skin/hair was relatively worse to live with. I also never knew how bad some side-effects could have been which is why I said I was lucky. However what I'll never know is - whether I'd be different if I never took it. Some side-effects are so out of the ordinary that even if I have it, I'll never effectively be able to say "yes, that was because I took Accutane when I was younger". Even being lucky, I still wished I just let the hormonal acne play out. Edit: I just had a quick glance on the list of side-effects and for example, I've had back pain since I was a teen, and I thought it was just my form that was the cause even though I'd watch tens of hours of videos on proper form, people I know would use way worse form and never suffer an injury. Minor anxiety and even being susceptible to being sick. Some of these apply but they are also very common in those taking Isotretinoin (besides the anxiety; 1/1000-10000) but sadly I can't ever know whether the cause was due to the medication.
arminiusreturns 6y ago
I had the pleasure to work with a top geneticist whose domain of specialty was the microbiome, and he continually insisted there are tons of discoveries to be made in the arena (which he and those researchers we sequenced for did often, from dentistry to studies of the monitor lizard to chrons disease, just all over in subjects you might not expect). Less on topic, I learned how to read scientific papers and filter bullshit ones (even in respectable journals) from good ones under his tutelage, and am forever grateful to the vast array of science and tech I was exposed to while supporting the tech side of a "every major sequencer" sequencing lab.
- domino24 6y ago
  Who did you work for? I am interested in getting more involved in this exact field and would appreciate any helpful direction :) I am digesting anything I can find on the topic, but I feel it is greatly underappreciated still, as I agree there is MUCH to be discovered.
  - arminiusreturns 6y ago
    I updated my profile with an email, please feel free to contact me there for more details.
newobj 6y ago
Excited for more research in gut health. I know HN hates to entertain any lay science, but I wonder if scraping my tongue, as I do with a copper scraper, is good or bad for your oral biome?
- abledon 6y ago
  in the morning, even scraping with your hand is good since you're removing the dead stuff thats accumulated on your tongue during sleep. eating this stuff has no nutritional value and is considered a 'toxin' in yogic traditions. lot of those online sites are just trying to 'sell something' to make a living so they mandate you 'need' a metallic scraper.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Probably!
  - recuter 6y ago
    Indubitably!
- sherr 6y ago
  Dentists (ones I have) usually recommend brushing your tongue as part of your tooth brushing routine. This helps prevent bad breath I think, which is correlated with oral hygiene.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- basicplus2 6y ago
  I found that my bad breath was the result of eating highly processed food and wheat based products, once i stopped eating these, my bad breath vanished. No tongue scraping or brushing required.
- eth0up 6y ago
  Below is an interesting bit of research which gets quite close to tackling your curiosity, or at least stimulating it. It specifically concerns oral hygiene and blood pressure, with a focus on nitric oxide. Tongue scraping seems beneficial, though there's no mention of copper. However, chlorhexidine (mouthwash ingredient) seems a disruptor of NO and may contribute to higher BP. I need to read the article myself, but a brief skim left a big impression. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7589924/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7589924/ Or https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6406172/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6406172/ Edit: I deleted and reposted this comment because I found the article was abridged and might not be the one I remember. I think I've got it right this time, but if not, follow the "full text links". Should be interesting either way.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
A long time ago, our ancestors were single-celled. Then, some cells decided to live together, form a slime, division of labor, organs, etc. And today, voila, we have humans. However, the single-celled never went away. We have been living together, co-evolving together, all this time. No human has ever lived without a microbiome. We have been in symbiosis all this time. The immune system picks off the baddies, while the goodies get to stick around, serving all sorts of useful functions. Not only that, but the goodies actually edge out the baddies, because they consume most of the resources available to microbes. Combined with help from immune system police, a balance is reached. That's the way it works until you introduce various ways to harm the microbiome. Preservatives in the food. Substances which indiscriminately kill bacteria on the skin and elsewhere. Antibiotics. Then the balance is thrown off, the baddies get to proliferate unchecked, the immune system can no longer cope with their scale. I've stopped using any products which harm my microbiome. It's not easy, and it's not a one-day or one-month or one-year transition, but it's paid off in ways I didn't even imagine possible when I started out. Edit: When I post about this stuff, I often get asked about specifics. For reasons of privacy, and several others, I would rather not get into them. Do your own research, find your own way. Don't wait for everything to be handed to you on a plate. I've provided more than enough information in this comment.
- M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
  how did you start?
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    .
    - volkk 6y ago
      can you expand on that? and also what do you mean by ways you couldn't even imagine?
  - Diederich 6y ago
    Starting in around 2013 or so, I stopped using any kind of soap or cleaner on my body, with a couple of exceptions. I still wash my hands regularly, and I use a tiny little bit of fairly bland, unscented soap between my legs in the shower. Note that my head hair is quite long, naturally coming down to my mid/lower back. How do I get my body/face clean in the shower? Very hot water and very vigorous scrubbing/rubbing. After doing that for a week, my body odor virtually disappeared, even when I was hot and sweaty. While my overall skin and hair condition had always been ok, it improved noticeably. I did this after reading a number of articles online about it and figured it would be worth trying. As a bit of an experimental control, I didn't tell my wife that I was doing this. We do regularly brush and braid each other's hair. After about two weeks, she said that my hair was more full and healthy than it's ever been, and she also confirmed the body odor changes. So this is anecdotal: it was useful for me, and might be useful to some others. However, given everything we're learning about microbiomes in and on the body, it seems to make a lot of sense.
dragosmocrii 6y ago
It's interesting to see more and more articles lately reporting a strong connection between ilnesses (or lack) and one's microbiome health. What I noticed from my experience, is that kombucha and kimchi make me feel great if I consume these regularly (once or twice a week). Sometimes I will indulge in some crap food like pizzas and noodles, which make me feel unwell, but kombucha and kimchi work as a reset :)
- genewitch 6y ago
  pizza and noodles are also high on the "glycemic index" whatever that means, and probably should be avoided. I don't think all noodles are, but probably most of the noodles in america should be avoided? Kombucha, especially if you brew your own and can adjust the tea used to make the perfect taste, is probably not doing any harm, and if any of the health benefits are true (i'm not sure, i never researched it, i just like the flavor) then awesome. I don't want to comment more than a couple times in these threads, so i'll just put this here: I've been saying that the gut bacteria are probably more "us" than our brains are; i read a study about 16 or 17 years ago that showed that wheat and sugar (two grasses) when digested in human guts release agonists/antagonist/whatever for opioids which your brain takes up. So when you go on a diet that restricts sugar or wheat, you actually literally mentally and physically suffer withdrawal symptoms. This can make massive cravings take hold, which might lead to over-indulgence in, say, chocolate chip cookies or cake, which cause the dwindling gut fauna to bloom like crazy, making you feel great even though you broke your diet, and making it even harder to attempt to get your plan back on the rails again. they're linking everything to gut biome now, alzheimers and a slew of other mental issues. I was so enraptured by the research and papers i read that i actually swore i'd have a farm before i was 45, producing excess food for anyone that wanted it. Nothing since then has contradicted the prior research, and as i said, there's new "traced to gut flora/fauna" papers being published what seems like biweekly.
inamberclad 6y ago
Seems like a good plug for a startup I used to work for. I'm no longer associated with them aside from my personal friendships but they're creating a pretty cool oral health product: https://freshhealth.com/ https://freshhealth.com/
wwww4all 6y ago
Mouth and gut health are directly related to physical health AND mental health. The gut is often called the second brain, and lots of mental health issues like anxiety, depression, stress, etc can be greatly helped by improving diet and healthy gut. It’s criminal that medical establishments are controlled by pharmaceutical companies and establishment media spreads prescription drug propaganda. Everyone needs to do their own research about gut health and direct impacts to physical and mental health.
- tomrod 6y ago
  > The gut is often called the second brain, and lots of mental health issues like anxiety, depression, stress, etc can be greatly helped by improving diet and healthy gut. Who calls it that? I've seen a comment or two before, but certainly not "everyone" calling it that. It's a nice analogy that probably could be stretched way too far, as these things go. Are the causal links clearly _known_ or correlation shows that the link may be identifiable? > It’s criminal that medical establishments are controlled by pharmaceutical companies and establishment media spreads prescription drug propaganda. Hmm... this sounds like conspiratorial thinking. Do you have evidence of this, and if it is the case, a reason why this status quo is worse than other alternatives? > Everyone needs to do their own research about gut health and direct impacts to physical and mental health. Why? Wouldn't it be more reasonable for scientists to research, work towards consensus, then report findings, rather than duplicating the fixed costs of setting up laboratories and health testing facilities in our garages? Considering I did this, what is the likelihood I find a stronger connection or novel fact about certain microbiota that inhabit my or my families' bodies? Or perhaps you're being less precise in your terminology, and you're advocating that people study scientists' research rather than conducting wetlab studies. Could you clarify? Analogously, we should also all study the universe, but few advocate for all to build radio telescopes on their available rooftops.
  - mrzimmerman 6y ago
    I don’t have anything to add to this brilliant response but I’d like to say how much I appreciate it.
bserge 6y ago
Or many ills affect the body in more extensive ways than thought. Constipation could be an early warning sign of Parkinson's and other problems, for example, not that you'd be able to tell. I'm pretty "natural", never had antibiotics and stuff. But I can tell you I've got plenty of problems that can never be fixed by gut bacteria. Besides, modern lives are anything but natural.
andrebotelho 6y ago
solid read
bsanr2 6y ago
Adding to the anecdotes: Around summer 2014, I began to focus very heavily on "bulking" for strength training. This was about a year after I'd developed very obvious symptoms of lactose intolerance and had had to cut uncultured dairy out of my diet. My meals were not diverse: fruit and Greek yogurt in the morning; chicken cooked in Indian sauces, roasted potatoes, and some green (usually broccoli or spinach) for lunch and dinner, along with protein shakes and a pre-workout carb load (such as PB+J). Drinks were water, orange juice, and kefir. That winter, my health collapsed. I started developing skin abscesses, and the antibiotics I received for a particularly bad episode caused me to develop a C diff infection. I had to severely limit my food intake, as too much or certain kinds would cause me to develop cramps, listlessness, and diarrhea, and lost about 40 pounds in 3 months. My body could not hold onto food long enough to process it correctly and I developed symptoms of incomplete digestion, and especially of fat indigestion (symptoms improved with anti-diarrheals). The next 3 years were a long battle to try to get back to normal. Store-bought probiotics didn't help; digestive enzymes did. Things didn't improve noticeably until after I began eating homemade sauerkraut, and especially after I began taking enzymes on an empty stomach (I was told that this might help to break down some structure that might harbor unhelpful bacteria). Eventually, I was able to return to most foods without issue, until last year, when a prediabetes scare prompted to try a ketogenic diet (this also seemed to solve a lingering issue, of multiple daily and urgent movements). All this to say... I don't really know what's going on. I've found some things that seem to work, but I could only guess at why, based on the timing of my downturns and upturns and of my interventions. I've spent literal days over this period trying to understand why my body is acting and reacting the way that it does, and following the (often slapdash) advice of people who target the microbiome as the source of ill or good health has sadly seemed to be the most efficacious route. However, I'm still not able to achieve the level of well-being I'd like to, and I attribute that largely to the dearth of hard facts available relating to diet and the human microbiome. Over the course of this journey, I've seen more and more professionals begin to take the issue seriously, but not nearly the level or quality of research we'd hope to see with such a fundamental topic. Here's to seeing that corrected before I have to punch whatever card this adulthood of gut trouble has been leading to.
vmception 6y ago
Interestingly, this is what holistic practitioners and naturopaths have been trying to say for a long time They’ve just substituted the scientific method with no method at all and devoid of all peer review or capability of it As technology improves I expect individualized and therefore holistic treatments to be at the forefront
tempestn 6y ago
It really seems like some decades in the future we'll look back at the results of gut microbiome research as akin to the discoveries of bacteria and viruses. Before those discoveries it was known that people got sick, and that developing sickness was correlated with various things, like proximity to sick people, or poor hygiene, but the mechanisms behind those correlations weren't known. (Or they were suspected, but with some misconceptions or lack of detail.) I expect and certainly hope that as this system is better understood, it will unlock numerous significant advances in medical science. Would just be nice if that process could happen faster!
DNied 6y ago
PAYWALLED
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
It seems reasonable. It's been said, even if we cloned a Mammoth, it would quickly die if we didn't colonize its gut carefully. It had adapted to eating what was growing forty thousand years ago. It would need different flora to digest hay today. Even then, there might be no solution compatible with its intestinal biochemistry. We are all products of our environment.
dukeofdoom 6y ago
A while back I read that people with root canal are far more likely to get cancer. The reasoning being that the empty root canal provides a pathway for bacteria/viruses to enter into the body. Causing chronic infections. Which leads to cancer.
fpgaminer 6y ago
I can only wish these researchers good luck; we don't even understand the gut's microbial ecosystem as it relates to gut diseases. I, unfortunately, have first hand experience here. The short version of my story is that I started out 2020 with an acid reflux diagnosis and ended 2020 laid out in bed 24/7 eating nothing but rice and potatoes with doctors shrugging over a mystery GI issue. They finally gave me a specially designed, brand name, and expensive as hell antibiotic that specifically targets the gut microbiota. The drug and its effect is the medical equivalent of the old IT adage: "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" The idea is to rain hell down upon your gut and hope it resets to a better balanced microbiota. So yeah, that's the current state of modern medicine when it comes to GI issues; bludgeon it to death and hope for the best. So God have mercy on this researcher attempting to identify links between the GI microbiota and other illnesses. P.S. I was somewhat inclined to go into more details on my journey, cause finding information on GI issues is so hard, but it would be a stupidly long comment. Suffice it to say, I learned a lot about the gut, but mostly about what we don't know. For all those people with IBS-*, SIBO, and NCGI out there, you have my deepest commiserations. Science can take the FODMAP diet and shove it up its poorly understood rectum. EDIT: I think in my revisions of this comment I forgot an important bit: the treatment seems to have worked. My symptoms are continuing to improve after the round of antibiotics. So as crude as the science may be, at least it worked.
- deathhand 6y ago
  Was there a re-colonization process? If so what kind/brand/bacteria types?
  - fpgaminer 6y ago
    The treatment is just 14-days of the antibiotic, there's nothing specifically done to recolonize your gut. The "off-and-on" again thing is really just a theory, if you can even call it that. Like a lot of medicine, it's something a drug they developed with an idea in mind, found that it worked and that's about the extent of our understanding of it. It may or may not do what we think it does, because all the manufacturer cared about is whether it works. I did do my own research on whether taking probiotics would be helpful, to recolonize my gut as you say. Of all the studies I read, none found any benefit. Both during treatment and after. So it's unlikely that a manual recolonization process is even needed. My personal pet theory is that the antibiotic doesn't wipe everything out, but instead works by making the gut a much, much more competitive environment. Beneficial flora tend to be better survivors in our guts (for various reasons), so they are more likely to survive the assault and the bad bugs are less likely. Once the good bugs have the advantage again they can outcompete and take over. There's also your gut's immune system which, based on my reading, has the potential to "farm" the flora in your gut. It too will be working to rid the bad bugs and promote the good ones. It seems like in the case of GI issues a bad bug gets a beachhead for one reason or the other and then your immune system can't naturally correct. The antibiotic gives it the chance to do that. Hence why probiotics are unlikely to do anything. It isn't a total elimination, so there's nothing to reseed. And your immune system is going to favor the same microbiota it grew accustomed to when you were born. Not to mention the appendix which is suspected as being a safe-harbor for your natural gut flora. I did take probiotics myself, since they don't seem to do any harm. I took them during and after treatment. Probiotic pills, Yakult, and yogurt. But there's no science backing that action.
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/qaOG1 https://archive.is/qaOG1
hmmokidk 6y ago
I say this all the time. There is a lot to say about this but anti-biotics aren't a silver bullet. There is a drawback to them bigger than any of us have really imagined. There are a whole slew of mysterious illnesses probably caused by imbalances in the gut.
dannygrannick 6y ago
Hi everyone! We’re planning to submit our formal launch on Hacker News in a few weeks, but given this post and all of the discussion around it I thought I would share a quick background now! Bristle (bristlehealth.com) is leveraging the oral microbiome to pioneer oral health testing and care. We use metagenomic sequencing to analyze the oral microbiome from a saliva sample - looking at fungi, bacteria, and viruses - delivering evidence-based insights around oral health. We are offering an early access program (https://www.bristlehealth.com/pages/early-access https://www.bristlehealth.com/pages/early-access) providing oral microbiome testing and consumer research reports, with literature-backed insights accessed through an interactive web app. We’re charging users $50 and will only bill you when we ship your kit. If you’re interested in learning more about your oral microbiome, please sign up! We literally launched yesterday and have gotten tons of interest based on exactly what’s being discussed here. We’re letting participants into the program in batches but will be turning kits around rapidly. If anyone wants to chat more feel free to reach out to info@bristlehealth.com. As I said, we will have a dedicated HN launch with lots more information in the coming weeks, but wanted to share given the interest and that we have this ready to go.
- trash3 6y ago
  Is there a need to account for circadian rhythms in sampling, do you ask your customers to swab at noon or before bed, or do you just include this info in model training/prediction?
  - david_l_lin 6y ago
    At the moment, we don't account for circadian rhythms. As we explore some of the insights to the oral microbiome, that's definitely one of the avenues we'd love to dig into. We do ask customers to fill out a relatively detailed health survey, so that we can explore associations between the oral microbiome in health and disease.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - 6y ago
satya71 6y ago
The evidence is weak to non-existent. I wish popular magazines would stop publishing these non-sense stories. At least they went with "linked" which is clearly saying correlation (which is not causation).
happyconcepts 6y ago
Someone please enlighten me as to why in 2021 DOCTORS and DENTISTS are still completely separate in the healthcare system? Danny I sincerely hope your team's efforts will accelerate the bridging of this divide.
- danparsonson 6y ago
  Where I come from, you'll find orthodontists in hospitals along with all the other doctors. If you're referring to the dentists whose job is to clean you up regularly and tell you to floss more often, I guess they're a distinct profession from GPs because that part of the body benefits from regular specific maintenance by a trained professional, but they're still doctors.
  - happyconcepts 6y ago
    Here in the US they offer health insurance and dental insurance as two completely separate programs. They are separated enough that it strikes me as remarkable.
- zaptrem 6y ago
  Insurance companies pushing a narrative to avoid paying for it? Complete guess.
- CTOSian 6y ago
  so they can milk people's £$€
sizzle 6y ago
I'm on antibiotics for an infection right now, how badly have I disrupted my microbiome? How will this effect me down the line?
- brigandish 6y ago
  You can work to repopulate the gut through diet. Fermented foods like sauerkraut and kimchi, for example, the odd bit of green banana every now and then to reach the intestines as a prebiotic, and avoiding junk food, obviously. There’s lots you can do. I made my first kimchi a couple of months and I’ve been making sauerkraut for a few years now. Even if they weren’t healthy I’d continue, the taste is worth it! (And so much better than what you can buy in the shops) Most of all, don’t let news like this stress you out, let it inspire you to a more fulfilling diet instead. Stress isn’t going to help.
- genewitch 6y ago
  Only some antibiotics will cause issues. If you have to take alternatives to any of the "cillin" family, the medical community at large recommends no more than 2 full treatments within 18 months. Anything more than that can lead to things like C. Diff and may require a fecal transplant or needing to take probiotics that a pharmacy will carry in a refrigerator up on their deck. I forget what the terminology is, but broad spectrum antibiotics are generally worse for your gut than something targeted, iirc.
jonas_kgomo 6y ago
Besides the gut flora being capable of some neurological effects it has demonstrated to be psychoactive. Professor Robert Sapolsky[1] has an amazing course on Behavorial Evolution. The toxoplasmic gondii comes from the rat -> cat -> gut -> brain, it is profound that side effects in the brain are chemically constructed from the stomach. Considering that most animals do not even have a brain,but usually have a stomach, it is evident that the gut is underestimated in the evolutionary tree. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Oa4Lp5fLE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Oa4Lp5fLE
perlgeek 6y ago
Several people I know have some seemingly disjoint food allergies, some of the attributed to lack of certain enzymes, some without any explanations. I'm wondering if some of the effects could be mitigated with sufficiently smart microbiome engineering.

304 points by aluket 6y ago

https://outline.com/TtrWGF https://outline.com/TtrWGF

> Dr Sampson has tested this hypothesis in mice. He bred a strain of E. coli that cannot make Curli and injected mice with it, while injecting others with unmodified bacteria. Those that received Curli-producing bacteria expressed higher levels of synuclein and demonstrated symptoms like involuntary rigidity which, when seen in people, are associated with Parkinson’s disease. That is tantalising. These mice were mono-colonized with E. coli, whereas both mice and humans normally have a diverse gut flora. I colonize mice with E. coli containing curli all the time and the mice do not exhibit any rigidity or symptoms of Parkinson's. So it's interesting but not quite as huge of an effect as you might think, unless your microbial flora is really disrupted. May be relevant if you have an antibiotic resistant strain of E. coli blooming in your intestine following antibiotic treatment/some other disruption of your microbiota. A gut bacterial amyloid promotes α-synuclein aggregation and motor impairment in mice https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7012599/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7012599/

boplicity 6y ago
As someone with IBD, I really wish the hard science about bacteria would start to filter into actual treatments. I know there are possibilities there, and many patients have found avenues of success, but there is so much guesswork involved that it is very frustrating. Hopefully there will be definitive answers in the future. My gastroenterologist, who has quite a lot of training from very good schools, has absolutely nothing useful to say, in terms of the microbiome.
- throw345hn 6y ago
  As someone with IBS, totally agree with you. I wish the research would trickle down into actual treatments. I have started following a lot of research about gut etc but very little of it leads to something that can mass consumed. I spent thousands of dollars on trying out medications, tests, visiting a number of highly trained doctors etc, nothing came up in tests and at the end almost all doctors threw their hands up and categorized my gut issues as IBS which is just a catchAll term for which there is no specific treatment other than trying out a number of things.
  - fodmap 6y ago
    Fellow IBS sufferer here. I understand and share your pain. There isn't any magic pill yet but until someone invents it I can tell you I've found great comfort following the FODMAP diet. I've wasted ten horrible years until I discovered that Monash University diet. Ten years of pain and expending. Hoping it can help you as well https://www.monashfodmap.com/ https://www.monashfodmap.com/
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - jodrellblank 6y ago
      (I didn't downvote). For comparison, imagine you signed up with the username "Oracle" and posted "Fellow data storage sufferer here. I understand and share your pain. There isn't any magic pill yet but until someone invents it I can tell you I've found great comfort using the Oracle database" and a link to a "purchase Oracle" page. You might be a well-meaning person, but you're hard to distinguish from a bot pushing a fad diet with online courses, a for-pay app, a shop, "find a dietician" services, certifications, etc. Preying on offering hope to the sick and desperate is common and people are cynical and wary of it, and even genuine well-meaning people are prone to sharing dubious alternative medicine suggestions which they honestly believe help but aren't proven to do anything more than the placebo effect. If you were a long-standing HN commentor, you'd probably get more benefit of the doubt; signing up as "fodmap" to link to an apparently for-profit fodmap service with an emotional message makes it easy to assume bad faith astroturfing at a glance - focused username, commercial link, fringe/alternative/woo treatment, claims of health cure for incurable condition, SEO style message ("As a fellow sufferer, believe me, I know, I've been there, trust me, just one easy credit card payment"). [I wrote this for your deleted comment;]

echelon 6y ago

As a layman, this is so exciting! It feels as though we may be getting closer to finding a cause for a diverse set of neurodegenerative disorders. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, etc. Gut and oral microbiota having influence across the blood-brain barrier seems so plausible. If they get into the nervous system and migrate, they could cause inflammation in the brain leading to damage over time. The immune system is incredible, and we'll no doubt find it a fertile ground for progress against a lot of diseases.

wyldfire 6y ago
Do we know whether these microbes are cause or effect? On the bright side I'd say even if they're [only] an effect of those illnesses, we'd have an excellent opportunity for earlier diagnosis.

andrewzah 6y ago

This is something that I've been thinking about lately. Last ~May, I spontaneously developed rashes exactly in the middle of the back of my hands at the same time. This lead to skin sensitivity and ultimately skin rashes across my body. At this point I've visited my dermatologist what, 20 times? In addition to my general physician, bloodwork, etc. Biopsies and bloodwork and other tests don't show anything abnormal, asides from excessively high IgE - 600 and now about 1,000. I recently started on Dupixent but it's too early to tell if it's helping or not. There doesn't seem to be any clear indicator, so I'm wondering if I ate something + stress, which affected my gut microbiome. My family has no history of this sort of issue and it seriously started about overnight.

tnayrb 6y ago
I'm no expert, but something similar happened to me a few years back. The conclusion was an allergic reaction to the sun...
- andrewzah 6y ago
  Did it go away on its own?
  - aedocw 6y ago
    I can't confirm today because it's very overcast, but as of a few days ago the sun had still not gone away.
    - andrewzah 6y ago
      I know you're joking, but this is a horrible condition. While researching I've seen some anecdotal stories about the condition just... clearing up after a while for some people, so hence my question.
      - joshspankit 6y ago
        I’m suspicious that your reply may also have a joke embedded in it...

bigmattystyles 6y ago

Completely anecdotal, personal experience. It wasn't Accutane but when I was a pimply teen, in an effort to remedy the acne, I was prescribed doxycycline and another topical antibacterial ointment; in any case, I never had heartburn or experienced depression prior to that but a few months after starting those meds, both started. It's likely unrelated but whenever I read how crucial biomes are - I can't help but wonder. For the record, I preferred the acne.

gr1zzlybe4r 6y ago
Anecdotally I wonder about this sometimes too. I took Accutane mostly because I had a parent that really drove me to take it (I think projecting some of their own issues with acne onto my completely normal amount of teenage acne) and I definitely feel like it changed my mood during and after taking it. I didn't drink at all on it either. It's a drug that you shouldn't be able to have a teenager take unless it's approved by a panel of dermatologists or something. I had no idea of the severity of the side effects from it when I took it.
- fraudsyndrome 6y ago
  I took this when I was a teenager too, acne was horrible even with a proper skincare routine. Getting access to Accutane was easy, only took 1 session with a Dermatologist who asked me basic questions on what my routine was. In hindsight I wonder if this should have been harder to access. Of course it worked and I feel like I gotboff relatively lucky with the side-effects. One benefit was dry(er) skin/hair, which sounds bad but oily skin/hair was relatively worse to live with. I also never knew how bad some side-effects could have been which is why I said I was lucky. However what I'll never know is - whether I'd be different if I never took it. Some side-effects are so out of the ordinary that even if I have it, I'll never effectively be able to say "yes, that was because I took Accutane when I was younger". Even being lucky, I still wished I just let the hormonal acne play out. Edit: I just had a quick glance on the list of side-effects and for example, I've had back pain since I was a teen, and I thought it was just my form that was the cause even though I'd watch tens of hours of videos on proper form, people I know would use way worse form and never suffer an injury. Minor anxiety and even being susceptible to being sick. Some of these apply but they are also very common in those taking Isotretinoin (besides the anxiety; 1/1000-10000) but sadly I can't ever know whether the cause was due to the medication.

arminiusreturns 6y ago

I had the pleasure to work with a top geneticist whose domain of specialty was the microbiome, and he continually insisted there are tons of discoveries to be made in the arena (which he and those researchers we sequenced for did often, from dentistry to studies of the monitor lizard to chrons disease, just all over in subjects you might not expect). Less on topic, I learned how to read scientific papers and filter bullshit ones (even in respectable journals) from good ones under his tutelage, and am forever grateful to the vast array of science and tech I was exposed to while supporting the tech side of a "every major sequencer" sequencing lab.

domino24 6y ago
Who did you work for? I am interested in getting more involved in this exact field and would appreciate any helpful direction :) I am digesting anything I can find on the topic, but I feel it is greatly underappreciated still, as I agree there is MUCH to be discovered.
- arminiusreturns 6y ago
  I updated my profile with an email, please feel free to contact me there for more details.

newobj 6y ago

Excited for more research in gut health. I know HN hates to entertain any lay science, but I wonder if scraping my tongue, as I do with a copper scraper, is good or bad for your oral biome?

abledon 6y ago
in the morning, even scraping with your hand is good since you're removing the dead stuff thats accumulated on your tongue during sleep. eating this stuff has no nutritional value and is considered a 'toxin' in yogic traditions. lot of those online sites are just trying to 'sell something' to make a living so they mandate you 'need' a metallic scraper.
StavrosK 6y ago
Probably!
- recuter 6y ago
  Indubitably!
sherr 6y ago
Dentists (ones I have) usually recommend brushing your tongue as part of your tooth brushing routine. This helps prevent bad breath I think, which is correlated with oral hygiene.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
basicplus2 6y ago
I found that my bad breath was the result of eating highly processed food and wheat based products, once i stopped eating these, my bad breath vanished. No tongue scraping or brushing required.
eth0up 6y ago
Below is an interesting bit of research which gets quite close to tackling your curiosity, or at least stimulating it. It specifically concerns oral hygiene and blood pressure, with a focus on nitric oxide. Tongue scraping seems beneficial, though there's no mention of copper. However, chlorhexidine (mouthwash ingredient) seems a disruptor of NO and may contribute to higher BP. I need to read the article myself, but a brief skim left a big impression. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7589924/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7589924/ Or https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6406172/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6406172/ Edit: I deleted and reposted this comment because I found the article was abridged and might not be the one I remember. I think I've got it right this time, but if not, follow the "full text links". Should be interesting either way.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

A long time ago, our ancestors were single-celled. Then, some cells decided to live together, form a slime, division of labor, organs, etc. And today, voila, we have humans. However, the single-celled never went away. We have been living together, co-evolving together, all this time. No human has ever lived without a microbiome. We have been in symbiosis all this time. The immune system picks off the baddies, while the goodies get to stick around, serving all sorts of useful functions. Not only that, but the goodies actually edge out the baddies, because they consume most of the resources available to microbes. Combined with help from immune system police, a balance is reached. That's the way it works until you introduce various ways to harm the microbiome. Preservatives in the food. Substances which indiscriminately kill bacteria on the skin and elsewhere. Antibiotics. Then the balance is thrown off, the baddies get to proliferate unchecked, the immune system can no longer cope with their scale. I've stopped using any products which harm my microbiome. It's not easy, and it's not a one-day or one-month or one-year transition, but it's paid off in ways I didn't even imagine possible when I started out. Edit: When I post about this stuff, I often get asked about specifics. For reasons of privacy, and several others, I would rather not get into them. Do your own research, find your own way. Don't wait for everything to be handed to you on a plate. I've provided more than enough information in this comment.

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 6y ago
how did you start?
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  .
  - volkk 6y ago
    can you expand on that? and also what do you mean by ways you couldn't even imagine?
- Diederich 6y ago
  Starting in around 2013 or so, I stopped using any kind of soap or cleaner on my body, with a couple of exceptions. I still wash my hands regularly, and I use a tiny little bit of fairly bland, unscented soap between my legs in the shower. Note that my head hair is quite long, naturally coming down to my mid/lower back. How do I get my body/face clean in the shower? Very hot water and very vigorous scrubbing/rubbing. After doing that for a week, my body odor virtually disappeared, even when I was hot and sweaty. While my overall skin and hair condition had always been ok, it improved noticeably. I did this after reading a number of articles online about it and figured it would be worth trying. As a bit of an experimental control, I didn't tell my wife that I was doing this. We do regularly brush and braid each other's hair. After about two weeks, she said that my hair was more full and healthy than it's ever been, and she also confirmed the body odor changes. So this is anecdotal: it was useful for me, and might be useful to some others. However, given everything we're learning about microbiomes in and on the body, it seems to make a lot of sense.

dragosmocrii 6y ago

It's interesting to see more and more articles lately reporting a strong connection between ilnesses (or lack) and one's microbiome health. What I noticed from my experience, is that kombucha and kimchi make me feel great if I consume these regularly (once or twice a week). Sometimes I will indulge in some crap food like pizzas and noodles, which make me feel unwell, but kombucha and kimchi work as a reset :)

genewitch 6y ago
pizza and noodles are also high on the "glycemic index" whatever that means, and probably should be avoided. I don't think all noodles are, but probably most of the noodles in america should be avoided? Kombucha, especially if you brew your own and can adjust the tea used to make the perfect taste, is probably not doing any harm, and if any of the health benefits are true (i'm not sure, i never researched it, i just like the flavor) then awesome. I don't want to comment more than a couple times in these threads, so i'll just put this here: I've been saying that the gut bacteria are probably more "us" than our brains are; i read a study about 16 or 17 years ago that showed that wheat and sugar (two grasses) when digested in human guts release agonists/antagonist/whatever for opioids which your brain takes up. So when you go on a diet that restricts sugar or wheat, you actually literally mentally and physically suffer withdrawal symptoms. This can make massive cravings take hold, which might lead to over-indulgence in, say, chocolate chip cookies or cake, which cause the dwindling gut fauna to bloom like crazy, making you feel great even though you broke your diet, and making it even harder to attempt to get your plan back on the rails again. they're linking everything to gut biome now, alzheimers and a slew of other mental issues. I was so enraptured by the research and papers i read that i actually swore i'd have a farm before i was 45, producing excess food for anyone that wanted it. Nothing since then has contradicted the prior research, and as i said, there's new "traced to gut flora/fauna" papers being published what seems like biweekly.

inamberclad 6y ago

Seems like a good plug for a startup I used to work for. I'm no longer associated with them aside from my personal friendships but they're creating a pretty cool oral health product: https://freshhealth.com/ https://freshhealth.com/

wwww4all 6y ago

Mouth and gut health are directly related to physical health AND mental health. The gut is often called the second brain, and lots of mental health issues like anxiety, depression, stress, etc can be greatly helped by improving diet and healthy gut. It’s criminal that medical establishments are controlled by pharmaceutical companies and establishment media spreads prescription drug propaganda. Everyone needs to do their own research about gut health and direct impacts to physical and mental health.

tomrod 6y ago
> The gut is often called the second brain, and lots of mental health issues like anxiety, depression, stress, etc can be greatly helped by improving diet and healthy gut. Who calls it that? I've seen a comment or two before, but certainly not "everyone" calling it that. It's a nice analogy that probably could be stretched way too far, as these things go. Are the causal links clearly _known_ or correlation shows that the link may be identifiable? > It’s criminal that medical establishments are controlled by pharmaceutical companies and establishment media spreads prescription drug propaganda. Hmm... this sounds like conspiratorial thinking. Do you have evidence of this, and if it is the case, a reason why this status quo is worse than other alternatives? > Everyone needs to do their own research about gut health and direct impacts to physical and mental health. Why? Wouldn't it be more reasonable for scientists to research, work towards consensus, then report findings, rather than duplicating the fixed costs of setting up laboratories and health testing facilities in our garages? Considering I did this, what is the likelihood I find a stronger connection or novel fact about certain microbiota that inhabit my or my families' bodies? Or perhaps you're being less precise in your terminology, and you're advocating that people study scientists' research rather than conducting wetlab studies. Could you clarify? Analogously, we should also all study the universe, but few advocate for all to build radio telescopes on their available rooftops.
- mrzimmerman 6y ago
  I don’t have anything to add to this brilliant response but I’d like to say how much I appreciate it.

bserge 6y ago

Or many ills affect the body in more extensive ways than thought. Constipation could be an early warning sign of Parkinson's and other problems, for example, not that you'd be able to tell. I'm pretty "natural", never had antibiotics and stuff. But I can tell you I've got plenty of problems that can never be fixed by gut bacteria. Besides, modern lives are anything but natural.

andrebotelho 6y ago

solid read

bsanr2 6y ago

Adding to the anecdotes: Around summer 2014, I began to focus very heavily on "bulking" for strength training. This was about a year after I'd developed very obvious symptoms of lactose intolerance and had had to cut uncultured dairy out of my diet. My meals were not diverse: fruit and Greek yogurt in the morning; chicken cooked in Indian sauces, roasted potatoes, and some green (usually broccoli or spinach) for lunch and dinner, along with protein shakes and a pre-workout carb load (such as PB+J). Drinks were water, orange juice, and kefir. That winter, my health collapsed. I started developing skin abscesses, and the antibiotics I received for a particularly bad episode caused me to develop a C diff infection. I had to severely limit my food intake, as too much or certain kinds would cause me to develop cramps, listlessness, and diarrhea, and lost about 40 pounds in 3 months. My body could not hold onto food long enough to process it correctly and I developed symptoms of incomplete digestion, and especially of fat indigestion (symptoms improved with anti-diarrheals). The next 3 years were a long battle to try to get back to normal. Store-bought probiotics didn't help; digestive enzymes did. Things didn't improve noticeably until after I began eating homemade sauerkraut, and especially after I began taking enzymes on an empty stomach (I was told that this might help to break down some structure that might harbor unhelpful bacteria). Eventually, I was able to return to most foods without issue, until last year, when a prediabetes scare prompted to try a ketogenic diet (this also seemed to solve a lingering issue, of multiple daily and urgent movements). All this to say... I don't really know what's going on. I've found some things that seem to work, but I could only guess at why, based on the timing of my downturns and upturns and of my interventions. I've spent literal days over this period trying to understand why my body is acting and reacting the way that it does, and following the (often slapdash) advice of people who target the microbiome as the source of ill or good health has sadly seemed to be the most efficacious route. However, I'm still not able to achieve the level of well-being I'd like to, and I attribute that largely to the dearth of hard facts available relating to diet and the human microbiome. Over the course of this journey, I've seen more and more professionals begin to take the issue seriously, but not nearly the level or quality of research we'd hope to see with such a fundamental topic. Here's to seeing that corrected before I have to punch whatever card this adulthood of gut trouble has been leading to.

vmception 6y ago

Interestingly, this is what holistic practitioners and naturopaths have been trying to say for a long time They’ve just substituted the scientific method with no method at all and devoid of all peer review or capability of it As technology improves I expect individualized and therefore holistic treatments to be at the forefront

tempestn 6y ago

It really seems like some decades in the future we'll look back at the results of gut microbiome research as akin to the discoveries of bacteria and viruses. Before those discoveries it was known that people got sick, and that developing sickness was correlated with various things, like proximity to sick people, or poor hygiene, but the mechanisms behind those correlations weren't known. (Or they were suspected, but with some misconceptions or lack of detail.) I expect and certainly hope that as this system is better understood, it will unlock numerous significant advances in medical science. Would just be nice if that process could happen faster!

DNied 6y ago

PAYWALLED

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

It seems reasonable. It's been said, even if we cloned a Mammoth, it would quickly die if we didn't colonize its gut carefully. It had adapted to eating what was growing forty thousand years ago. It would need different flora to digest hay today. Even then, there might be no solution compatible with its intestinal biochemistry. We are all products of our environment.

dukeofdoom 6y ago

A while back I read that people with root canal are far more likely to get cancer. The reasoning being that the empty root canal provides a pathway for bacteria/viruses to enter into the body. Causing chronic infections. Which leads to cancer.

fpgaminer 6y ago

I can only wish these researchers good luck; we don't even understand the gut's microbial ecosystem as it relates to gut diseases. I, unfortunately, have first hand experience here. The short version of my story is that I started out 2020 with an acid reflux diagnosis and ended 2020 laid out in bed 24/7 eating nothing but rice and potatoes with doctors shrugging over a mystery GI issue. They finally gave me a specially designed, brand name, and expensive as hell antibiotic that specifically targets the gut microbiota. The drug and its effect is the medical equivalent of the old IT adage: "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" The idea is to rain hell down upon your gut and hope it resets to a better balanced microbiota. So yeah, that's the current state of modern medicine when it comes to GI issues; bludgeon it to death and hope for the best. So God have mercy on this researcher attempting to identify links between the GI microbiota and other illnesses. P.S. I was somewhat inclined to go into more details on my journey, cause finding information on GI issues is so hard, but it would be a stupidly long comment. Suffice it to say, I learned a lot about the gut, but mostly about what we don't know. For all those people with IBS-*, SIBO, and NCGI out there, you have my deepest commiserations. Science can take the FODMAP diet and shove it up its poorly understood rectum. EDIT: I think in my revisions of this comment I forgot an important bit: the treatment seems to have worked. My symptoms are continuing to improve after the round of antibiotics. So as crude as the science may be, at least it worked.

deathhand 6y ago
Was there a re-colonization process? If so what kind/brand/bacteria types?
- fpgaminer 6y ago
  The treatment is just 14-days of the antibiotic, there's nothing specifically done to recolonize your gut. The "off-and-on" again thing is really just a theory, if you can even call it that. Like a lot of medicine, it's something a drug they developed with an idea in mind, found that it worked and that's about the extent of our understanding of it. It may or may not do what we think it does, because all the manufacturer cared about is whether it works. I did do my own research on whether taking probiotics would be helpful, to recolonize my gut as you say. Of all the studies I read, none found any benefit. Both during treatment and after. So it's unlikely that a manual recolonization process is even needed. My personal pet theory is that the antibiotic doesn't wipe everything out, but instead works by making the gut a much, much more competitive environment. Beneficial flora tend to be better survivors in our guts (for various reasons), so they are more likely to survive the assault and the bad bugs are less likely. Once the good bugs have the advantage again they can outcompete and take over. There's also your gut's immune system which, based on my reading, has the potential to "farm" the flora in your gut. It too will be working to rid the bad bugs and promote the good ones. It seems like in the case of GI issues a bad bug gets a beachhead for one reason or the other and then your immune system can't naturally correct. The antibiotic gives it the chance to do that. Hence why probiotics are unlikely to do anything. It isn't a total elimination, so there's nothing to reseed. And your immune system is going to favor the same microbiota it grew accustomed to when you were born. Not to mention the appendix which is suspected as being a safe-harbor for your natural gut flora. I did take probiotics myself, since they don't seem to do any harm. I took them during and after treatment. Probiotic pills, Yakult, and yogurt. But there's no science backing that action.

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/qaOG1 https://archive.is/qaOG1

hmmokidk 6y ago

I say this all the time. There is a lot to say about this but anti-biotics aren't a silver bullet. There is a drawback to them bigger than any of us have really imagined. There are a whole slew of mysterious illnesses probably caused by imbalances in the gut.

dannygrannick 6y ago

Hi everyone! We’re planning to submit our formal launch on Hacker News in a few weeks, but given this post and all of the discussion around it I thought I would share a quick background now! Bristle (bristlehealth.com) is leveraging the oral microbiome to pioneer oral health testing and care. We use metagenomic sequencing to analyze the oral microbiome from a saliva sample - looking at fungi, bacteria, and viruses - delivering evidence-based insights around oral health. We are offering an early access program (https://www.bristlehealth.com/pages/early-access https://www.bristlehealth.com/pages/early-access) providing oral microbiome testing and consumer research reports, with literature-backed insights accessed through an interactive web app. We’re charging users $50 and will only bill you when we ship your kit. If you’re interested in learning more about your oral microbiome, please sign up! We literally launched yesterday and have gotten tons of interest based on exactly what’s being discussed here. We’re letting participants into the program in batches but will be turning kits around rapidly. If anyone wants to chat more feel free to reach out to info@bristlehealth.com. As I said, we will have a dedicated HN launch with lots more information in the coming weeks, but wanted to share given the interest and that we have this ready to go.

trash3 6y ago
Is there a need to account for circadian rhythms in sampling, do you ask your customers to swab at noon or before bed, or do you just include this info in model training/prediction?
- david_l_lin 6y ago
  At the moment, we don't account for circadian rhythms. As we explore some of the insights to the oral microbiome, that's definitely one of the avenues we'd love to dig into. We do ask customers to fill out a relatively detailed health survey, so that we can explore associations between the oral microbiome in health and disease.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - 6y ago

satya71 6y ago

The evidence is weak to non-existent. I wish popular magazines would stop publishing these non-sense stories. At least they went with "linked" which is clearly saying correlation (which is not causation).

happyconcepts 6y ago

Someone please enlighten me as to why in 2021 DOCTORS and DENTISTS are still completely separate in the healthcare system? Danny I sincerely hope your team's efforts will accelerate the bridging of this divide.

danparsonson 6y ago
Where I come from, you'll find orthodontists in hospitals along with all the other doctors. If you're referring to the dentists whose job is to clean you up regularly and tell you to floss more often, I guess they're a distinct profession from GPs because that part of the body benefits from regular specific maintenance by a trained professional, but they're still doctors.
- happyconcepts 6y ago
  Here in the US they offer health insurance and dental insurance as two completely separate programs. They are separated enough that it strikes me as remarkable.
zaptrem 6y ago
Insurance companies pushing a narrative to avoid paying for it? Complete guess.
CTOSian 6y ago
so they can milk people's £$€

sizzle 6y ago

I'm on antibiotics for an infection right now, how badly have I disrupted my microbiome? How will this effect me down the line?

brigandish 6y ago
You can work to repopulate the gut through diet. Fermented foods like sauerkraut and kimchi, for example, the odd bit of green banana every now and then to reach the intestines as a prebiotic, and avoiding junk food, obviously. There’s lots you can do. I made my first kimchi a couple of months and I’ve been making sauerkraut for a few years now. Even if they weren’t healthy I’d continue, the taste is worth it! (And so much better than what you can buy in the shops) Most of all, don’t let news like this stress you out, let it inspire you to a more fulfilling diet instead. Stress isn’t going to help.
genewitch 6y ago
Only some antibiotics will cause issues. If you have to take alternatives to any of the "cillin" family, the medical community at large recommends no more than 2 full treatments within 18 months. Anything more than that can lead to things like C. Diff and may require a fecal transplant or needing to take probiotics that a pharmacy will carry in a refrigerator up on their deck. I forget what the terminology is, but broad spectrum antibiotics are generally worse for your gut than something targeted, iirc.

jonas_kgomo 6y ago

Besides the gut flora being capable of some neurological effects it has demonstrated to be psychoactive. Professor Robert Sapolsky[1] has an amazing course on Behavorial Evolution. The toxoplasmic gondii comes from the rat -> cat -> gut -> brain, it is profound that side effects in the brain are chemically constructed from the stomach. Considering that most animals do not even have a brain,but usually have a stomach, it is evident that the gut is underestimated in the evolutionary tree. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Oa4Lp5fLE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Oa4Lp5fLE

perlgeek 6y ago

Several people I know have some seemingly disjoint food allergies, some of the attributed to lack of certain enzymes, some without any explanations. I'm wondering if some of the effects could be mitigated with sufficiently smart microbiome engineering.