4 ms·

I'm a big believer in the idea that diet can influence the microbiome but current science does not support the above statements. While diet can induce a shift

• easygenes 4y ago
  Yeah, you need to be able to produce the lactase enzyme yourself to avoid having your gut bacteria be the ones to break down lactose (and thus produce indigestion). On the idea that your microbiome can take a long time to recover from elimination diets: 1) From a gastrointestinal morphology perspective, we are opportunistic scavengers, so our whole biology is directed around sporadically eating just about anything. 2) I've seen several studies showing that, for the most part, our gut microbiome radically reshapes itself within a matter of days in response to major diet changes.
• Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
  "unsupported" sounds more like not truthful, but unknown make it seems like it's unexplored.
• causi 4y ago
  I'm always baffled at how China is largely lactose-intolerant while also being ground-zero for weird milk drinks.
  • samatman 4y ago
    Calpis (Calipico in some markets) is the original of these and is fermented to turn all the lactose into lactic acid. AIUI drinking whole milk is mostly a Hong Kong thing.
• Arn_Thor 4y ago
  Anecdote alert here, but I grew up in Northern Europe and had a standard diet absolutely full of dairy. No problems. Then I moved to East Asia for about a year and inadvertently cut out dairy completely (it just wasn't in any food, and I didn't crave it). When I went back on holiday after the first year and reintroduced dairy into my diet it seemed I had developed a serious intolerance to it which took months to slowly undo. Now I try to eat a little dairy every now and then just to stay accustomed to it.
  • BizarroLand 4y ago
    Most people who are lactose intolerant aren't aware they are lactose intolerant, and many people are lactose intolerant. Chances are, you are lactose intolerant but you were adjusted to the side effects as being normal until you had a period of your life where you were not dealing with them. For a lot of people, lactose intolerance makes them a little gassy, or changes their bowel habits. It's practically negligible until they get away from it for a while and experience relief from the symptoms. If you are lactose intolerant, you should probably try to not trigger that response, or take lactaid supplements when you are going to knowingly eat lactose so that your body has something to digest those sugars. It's a minor adjustment that can make your daily life just a little more bearable.
    • Arn_Thor 4y ago
      Born and bred by the most Nordic of Nordic folk, I've had no gastric trouble whatsoever, aside from the odd bout of food poisoning. There were no symptoms from which I felt relief when I stopped having dairy. I can all but guarantee I did not grow up lactose intolerant.
  • DoreenMichele 4y ago
    I actually value anecdotal health stuff more than most folks. I just am not at my best and don't really know how to engage with this other than to say "Thanks."
    • Arn_Thor 4y ago
• kixiQu 4y ago
  https://www.thecut.com/2018/02/i-accidentally-made-myself-lactose-intolerant-with-whole30.html https://www.thecut.com/2018/02/i-accidentally-made-myself-la... quoted "gastrointestinal specialist Kim Barrett, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego" > “To some extent, our ability to handle lactose is a use-it-or-lose-it phenomenon,” Barrett says. The body digests lactose — a disaccharide — by using lactase, an enzyme in the small intestine, to break it down into the monosaccharides glucose and galactose, which can then be absorbed. “If you don’t have the [lactose] substrate in the diet, you start to reduce the synthesis of the lactase enzyme to digest it,” Barrett explains. “After a period of completely excluding lactose from the diet, you may not have any of those digestive enzymes present.” Maybe unawareness here is a gender thing? I have heard this story too many times from women doing weird short-term restriction diets (or going vegan and trying to undo) to feel like I need "current science" to "support" the very fact that it happens. Many things can happen because of genes or other reasons.
  • DoreenMichele 4y ago
    Maybe unawareness here is a gender thing? If you are assuming I'm male, you are in error.
• danShumway 4y ago
  > appear to be temporary That's a good point to bring up, but I do wonder if this is splitting hairs just a little bit. A shift in your microbiome might be technically temporary while still making things feel very weird for that temporary period -- however long that takes to change. Also keep in mind: > Whether prolonged dietary changes can induce permanent alterations in the gut microbiota is unknown, mainly due to a lack of long-term human dietary interventions, or long-term follow-ups of short-term dietary interventions. > > [...] > > Our understanding of the duration required for a dietary intervention to have an enduring impact on the gut microbiota, and consequently health, is hampered by several limitations. Firstly, there is a lack of long-term human studies, or indeed follow-ups of short-term dietary interventions, that seek to establish if a diet-induced modulation of the gut microbiota endures, though the wash-out periods of cross-sectional studies provide some indirect insight. ---- All that to say I actually kind of agree, and I also don't see super-strong scientific evidence of induced lactose intolerance, but I qualify that by saying that it might just be a lack of study. And again, could also be a difference in what people mean by "permanent". If something makes you lactose intolerant for a month, that's still interesting, even if that's not meeting GP's "in a year" claim. I've been vegan for maybe a year and half at this point, and was vegetarian before that. I'm curious how my body would react to eating a meat/cheese/lactose heavy meal if I sprang one on it out of the blue (not curious enough to actually try it, but it would be an interesting experiment).
  • DoreenMichele 4y ago
    I'm not splitting hairs. I'm engaging in conversation to the best of my ability while under the weather, which is generally true of my interactions on HN. My anecdotal experience or understanding is that potato starch is generally good for gut health, that you can nearly live on potatoes alone which is why the Irish Potato Famine was such a big deal -- big families on small plots of land were keeping people alive by growing mostly potatoes and people died in droves when the potato crop was screwed up -- and if you include oils in your "potato only" diet like the instructions allow for, coconut oil is medically known for many decades to be good for gut health due to being high in medium chain triglycerides and a guy with a PhD told me it's specifically good for microbiota. Butter is also a decent source of medium chain triglycerides though not as high as coconut oil. Whatever is or is not true generally about "eat ONLY this" diets, my suspicion is a potato only diet -- especially if you include the right oils/fats -- is probably not a big threat to your microbiota (though other sources here are saying that losing your lactose tolerance totally is a thing and that may well be something that can happen with this diet). Which I didn't want to say and may yet regret saying, but in for a penny, in for a pound as they say.
• worker_person 4y ago
  Autoimmune Protocol Diet is big in the autoimmune support place. I've tried it myself and try to stick to it. When strict on it my horrific whole body burning pain stopped. Not everyone, but many people are either cured, show no symptoms, or have reduced symptoms. I've also noticed a lot of people that have never heard of it eventually rediscover it via trial and error on how their body responds. Funny enough in contrast to the article. Potatoes (nightshades) are not allowed. Sweet potatoes are.