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A primer on why microbiome research is hard
- lencastre 2y agoMore like this please!!!
- PaulHoule 2y agoI kinda roll my eyes when I hear anything about the microbiome because it so rarely turns into an actual therapy.
- jjtheblunt 2y agoWhat about yogurt, kombucha, kimchi, etc.? Those have been around and globally common "forever". They're low profile, though, in their ubiquity.
- PaulHoule 2y agoAren’t those “the ones that mother gives you that don’t do anything at all?” like all the other scammy probiotics?
- jjtheblunt 2y agoI keep reading your sentence above, and i remember your username as seeming to have a similar overlap with my background, and so i keep thinking you sound like you're describing homeopathic tinctures. i might have missed claims about kombucha, or probiotics, to be fair, since i just probably randomly like kombucha, whereas you don't, and i didn't worry about scams, just non toxicity. i say that having gotten in amusing question sessions with vendors in organic groceries about the homeopathic stuff, years ago, until i got bored with it all.
- JKCalhoun 2y agoI don't know. I'm seeing articles suggesting our diet used to contain more fermented foods but inventions like refrigeration has altered our diet to no longer lean on fermented foods as much.
- PaulHoule 2y agoAnd what proof is there that that stuff is good for your health?
- remixff2400 2y agoIsn't that the whole point of the article? Microbiome research is hard? In this case, we're just left with trying to extrapolate loosely based off of trends. There's nothing to suggest that these things are bad for your health (as far as I'm aware) and there's a hypothesis (not a theory) that these might've contributed to gut microbiomes in the past. But, rather than conclusive proof, it might just be something low-stakes that people can try until more hard research or data is found that has a more conclusive direction, even if it disproves previous hypotheses. Until then, we're left making best-guess efforts with no conclusive proof. But, suggesting that these have no benefit is also incorrect until we have conclusive data to suggest otherwise. Hence, the point of the article: figuring out stuff about the microbiome is hard.
- PaulHoule 2y agoAnyhow I eat a lot of yogurt and love kimchi, but to be kombucha is only slightly more palatable than battery acid. (e.g. heartburn in a bottle)
- tharkun__ 2y agoScientific proof: see article. I'm actually with you on the popular culture BS and commercial bandwagon part of everyone talks about kimchi now etc. But then anecdata of one: before all the kimchi craze and all that started in earnest I was looking into why even an alcohol free beer would give me the worst migraines ever. Other foods would do it too. Alcohol would be even worse. A lot of googling and trial and error later I found that the microbiome most definitely is involved. In fact, some of these yoghurts that people peddle as good for you would trigger my migraines. Danone Activia for example would give me guaranteed headaches. Too many tomatoes would too. Really anything histamine producing would which explains why alcohol was doubly bad but not necessary. And using the right kind of probiotic, which does not include (too many) histamine producing strains but notably does contain "bacillus subtilis" did it for me. And yes I tried a lot before this and I do think but can't scientifically prove that it's that one because most if not all others have been part of other ones I tried before (both in combination probiotics and single strain versions).
- trhway 2y ago>scammy probiotics It is pretty understandably where you're coming from. The industry has no standards/certifications and thus a free play for anybody. I for example haven’t found anything effective for me. For my dog though the FortiFlora noticeably improves the output (fortunately we have no serious issues here, it just like any dog owner you watch your dog's output as an important health indicator and over years, my is 15 already, you get to become a big specialist on your dog's output and notice any worsenings or improvements).
- doodlebugging 2y agoThanks for this article. I think it places a lot of the gut microbiome studies and findings in context. As a note for the author in case they are reading - you should do a quick Find/Replace on the article keyed on the word "git". There is more than one instance in the text where it clearly should read "gut microbiome" (or similar) and instead reads "git microbiome".
- GuB-42 2y ago> There is more than one instance in the text where it clearly should read "gut microbiome" (or similar) and instead reads "git microbiome". > For example, the git microbe Bacteroides dorei has become increasingly recognized for its role in heart conditions and T1D. I find the word "git" perfectly appropriate here.
- doodlebugging 2y agoPerhaps I am mistaken and "git" in this context is simply an acronymn for "gastro-intestinal tract". Maybe capitalization would make this more obvious to those of us not directly involved in that space or a definition of "git" somewhere in the paper that defines use of the term in that context. If that already happened then I missed it. Thanks for pointing this out.
- kfarr 2y agoEither that or version control causes hypertension for some folks…
- doodlebugging 2y agoOr worse, Type 1 diabetes!
- kfarr 2y ago"Check with your doctor to see how many units of insulin you'll need to inject with each merged PR."
- arresin 2y agoThanks for the link. Very important research and I’m thankful for the scientists taking it on.
- zug_zug 2y agoFascinating article. Slightly-off-topic: This article presents the hard science as exceedingly difficult. I kinda suspect part of that is scientists have this attitude of acting completely blind to the hundreds of millions of years of evolution that made us what we are. For example, if we suppose that microbiome is important to health, and suppose that all human behaviors (e.g. hand-shaking, kissing) I think it gets us pretty quickly toward some great avenues to test. I almost wonder if the imperfect sanitation conditions we evolved in might have conferred some ability to exchange fecal microbes. Now obviously this doesn't really solve the fact that sequencing a microbiome is incredibly hard. But even without sequencing a microbiome you could probably do a blind test of saliva-swapping vs water and see to what degree this affects self-reported measures. Or if that's too hard to get past IRB, have one towel that's been touched by 50 people and one towel that's completely clean, and see if touching that has any subjective effects. It feels like the kind of things you could test on 1,000 students in a weekend for free.
- Metacelsus 2y agoRegarding the cancer microbiome controversy, I am on the side of the skeptics. The issue of mis-identifying human sequences as bacterial (due to human DNA contamination in bacterial reference genomes) is a big problem, and the authors of the original study didn't properly filter out human-derived sequencing reads. That error, by itself, invalidates the paper.