6 ms·

Gut bacteria are an extremely powerful system within our bodies and are mostly still mysterious to us. Imbalances of one type or another lead to large amounts

Gut bacteria are an extremely powerful system within our bodies and are mostly still mysterious to us. Imbalances of one type or another lead to large amounts of bacterial toxins being introduced to the intestine and the bloodstream, with wide-ranging mental and physical effects. I'm not surprised that contribution to obesity is among them. It works kind of like this: You eat too much refined/processed food, that is high in sugars of any kind, especially complex polysaccharides and the food is not fully digested by your stomach + small intestine, and ends up in your large intestine. This surplus of sugars provides abundant food to your billions of gut bacteria, and they start to grow out of control, and mutate. Those mutated bacteria now dump their toxic waste by-products into your body. Following restricted diets that are intended to reduce the food supply to your gut bacteria colonies is a valid and often the only successful way to treat the conditions caused by this influx of bacteria and toxins. Antibiotics of any kind are simply too broad a weapon - they will attempt to eliminate everything which will result in other imbalances. The food we eat every day is the most important factor for intestinal and therefore overall health... [1] This book is helpful: http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info

jbattle 14y ago
I thought the problem with refined/processed foods was that they were too easy for our bodies to absorb. Or is that true, but the amount consumed still results in a lot of 'leftovers'?
- splatcollision 14y ago
  Yeah that seems a little counterintuitive at first, but your assumption is correct. You still absorb lots of cheap calories from the sugars / carbs that you eat, but there's still plenty of leftovers for the bacteria. Everyone's different though - some people may have no issues at all, others are extremely sensitive.
Alex3917 14y ago
"[the pathogen] can induce obesity and insulin resistance via an inflammation-mediated pathway" This is why weed reduces one's risk of diabetes and also often helps obese people lose weight.[1] For what it's worth, you can now actually (supposedly) buy CBD (supposedly) legally online: http://dixiex.com/ http://dixiex.com/ CBD is one of the more common non-psychoactive cannabinoids in marijuana, and it is responsible for many of the anti-inflammatory benefits. While more research is needed, lots of people are reporting the same sorts of benefits that this research is reporting, but without the obvious negative side effects of taking anti-biotics. (Whether there are negative effects of longterm CBD use is anyone's guess, but as far as I know nothing has been discovered so far.) [1] http://blog.norml.org/2012/12/12/study-cannabis-associated-with-lower-diabetes-risk/ http://blog.norml.org/2012/12/12/study-cannabis-associated-w...
- splatcollision 14y ago
  Great points. The sooner this medicine can be freely accessible and available to all the better.
- gamache 14y ago
  CBD is most definitely psychoactive. It also accounts for about 25-50% of marijuana's active components, so we are living in a world full of long-term data. Cannabidiol is most definitely illegal in the US, too. That DixieX site you link to is just hemp oil products -- no psychoactives.
  - Alex3917 14y ago
    CBD is considered non-psychoactive by fiat. This is because it has a low affinity for receptor sites in the brain and it doesn't cause significant impairment. You may or may not be able to feel it though. And it's definitely not 25-50% of most commercial strains (unless specifically bred for it), that may be true of certain landrace varietals though. Also the amount of cannabinoids DixieX is citing is actually the minimum CBD content. They show their lab results on their Facebook page. The reason the don't cite the CBD content is because CBD is illegal, but hemp products are legal if the THC content is below a certain level. They're trying to play it off as a legal grey area and are taking a calculated risk.
jonnathanson 14y ago
Tangential, but: is the whole obsession with fiber a bit misguided? If polysaccharides are largely responsible for feeding gut bacteria (good and bad), and your link recommends cutting them out, then by definition, we should be cutting out dietary fibers (most of which are polysaccharides). Fiber is mostly undigestible in our stomachs and upper GI tracts, but is readily fermented by (and feeds) intestinal bacteria. Or am I missing something here? Someone with a bit more knowledge of organic chemistry and biology can feel free to chime in here.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  Most people are not aware that "fiber" is really just chains of sugar. I suspect this is where a lot of conflicting advice comes from.
- hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
  The fiber helps your bowels work correctly. We were not created to evacuate bricks. You don't need a PhD in organic chemistry and biology to understand that, just experience with babies.
  - jonnathanson 14y ago
    Well, yes and no. A lot of cultures live almost exclusively on carnivorous diets, in which vegetable fiber is extremely rare (if eaten at all). Evidently the fats in the diet serve as lubricants in the absence of the mechanical action that fibers serve in the intestines. I'm not disputing that fibers help "push things along" by absorbing water, adding bulk, etc. But are we overeating them? Do we really need to be making a conscious effort to add or supplement them in our diets? FWIW: I'm not pushing some sort of anti-fiber claim or agenda here. I'm neutral on the subject. I'm simply inquiring.
    - Mz 14y ago
      I think that depends in part on who your ancestors are -- I.e. do you have genes from a carnivorous culture? My exhusband is part Viking, basically. They ate a lot of meat, in part because they lived so far north that you couldn't grow enough plantbased foods. My ex ate a very high meat diet. Our sons eat less meat than he did, but they are 1/4 Norwegian whereas he is 1/2. Still, they tolerate more meat in their diet than I do. I am convinced there is a genetic component here. (Yes I know: Anecdotal and all that.)
Steqheu 14y ago
This is one of the first times I've heard such a confident voice of reason regarding this topic in such a liberal atmosphere. Thank you.
checker 14y ago
Forgive my naivete (I have a passing knowledge about diet), but isn't 'complex polysaccharides' more or less a synonym for 'complex carbohydrates' (excluding oligosaccharides)? I feel that most readily available refined/processed food is low in complex carbs since the processing breaks them down, and because simple carbs are cheaper and taste better. Essentially my question is this: A fresh vegetarian diet is going to be high in the complex polysaccharides that you mention. So why are vegetarians statistically thinner than the average population, if these complex polysaccharides are wreaking havoc on their digestive systems? This whole question breaks down if I'm mistaken about the definition of complex polysaccharide. Thanks.
- Udo 14y ago
  You are correct to doubt the meaning of these words as they are being flung around for the sole reason of providing credibility. Your mistake is coming with scientific thoughts into a discussion that is utterly non-scientific and purely based on making money with buzzword-laden books by turning anything related to food into a weird cult-like experience. But at least your questions are in an area where I can maybe help out. Carbohydrates are just what the name says: carbon molecules with hydrogen and oxygen attached to them. Complexity of carbohydrates is a spectrum, with formaldehyde being at one end and ultra-complex molecules such as huge amino-saccharides or polymers on the other. Saccharides are sugars, who all belong to the carbohydrate family. As far as nutrition is concerned, most sugars are based on the glucose molecule, that's a unit with 6 carbon atoms typically wound into a ring with six or five edges. Chaining those rings together makes polysaccharides. Overly long saccharide chains only fit into our sweetness taste detectors at one point, that's one ping each from a huge number of saccharide rings. Smaller sugars (like dextrose) cause a lot more signal by fitting better into the detectors, that's why they tend to taste sweeter. Polysaccharide disassembly starts with enzymes in the saliva of the mouth, that's why some things get sweeter when you chew on them for a while. For people who don't gobble down their food to quickly, that means only small sugar molecules even arrive in the small intestine, where they are further split into monosaccharides which can finally be resorbed through the intestinal wall. The small intestine is ill-equipped to handle longer chains, though, that's why they pass into the large intestine. In itself that's not a problem, but if there is a _regular and large_ amount of this stuff in the large intestine, it will attract microbes that live off it. So if a lot of sugars regularly make it into the large intestine, chances are there will be a population of bacteria (or worse: funghi) taking advantage of that. It's not like the bacteria cause obesity as some articles suggest, their presence is itself a symptom of a nutritional problem (such as too much intake). Of course sometimes these colonies cause other problems like inflammatory reactions that eventually necessitate flushing them out. But saying those bacteria cause obesity is just the new "I'm not fat, I'm big boned", a mechanism designed to deflect the responsibility for obesity away from a person's behavior. The digestive system is designed to survive and thrive on a variety of food, but there is also a lot that can go wrong. It's not "evil complex polysaccharides" wreaking havoc and producing energy out of thin air to make people fat, it's (as always) people eating too much who are bringing this upon themselves. One good thing food cults such as the different "nutrition plans" and "strategies" can do, however, is making people reflect on their habits and generally lower their energy consumption. To make it extra clear: I don't think vegetarianism is one of these cults, but it too causes people to eat more carefully.
tarice 14y ago
I've also heard that eating smaller meals, more regularly, can help your body lose weight. This trend correlates well with the above idea, since smaller meals means that the sugars should be absorbed before the large intestine, thereby further robbing the bacteria of their food. It would also explain the opposite effect - that eating larger meals makes losing weight harder, since the larger quantity of food has a better chance to get to your large intestine.
wildranter 14y ago
I went straight to the food list. They lost me at coffee should be VERY weak. They can't take that away from me! :)
Roshini 14y ago
No. It is pretty much impossible to overload your body's ability to absorb carbohydrates without a) exploding your stomach or b) you have some other health problem. By the time the food you eat gets to the bacteria, there are no sugar, fat or protein left. We absorb it all. We store extra of the first two and excrete the third (in a modified form) through urine. Refined/processed food should be eaten in minimal quantities because it spikes blood sugar and causes insulin fatigue, which in the long run causes Type II diabetes. And I'm in medical school, so yes, I do know what I'm talking about.
- pnathan 14y ago
  > Refined/processed food should be eaten in minimal quantities because it spikes blood sugar and causes insulin fatigue, which in the long run causes Type II diabetes. What precisely does refined/processed food mean, from a chemistry standpoint? Is there a particular common process that transforms my homegrown lettuce into "refined lettuce"?
  - sjg007 14y ago
    The refining process breaks down complex carbs into simpler carbs.
- beswift 14y ago
  >By the time the food you eat gets to the bacteria, there are no sugar, fat or protein left You realize those bacteria are living off the fat, sugar and protein you consume right? They are essential to our ability to utilize the chemicals we get from these macro nutrients. >Refined/processed food should be eaten in minimal quantities because it spikes blood sugar and causes insulin fatigue, which in the long run causes Type II diabetes. True, but this also an increasingly old school and one dimensional way of thinking about how type II develops. There are a host of genetic and environmental factors that effect an individual's response and eventual tolerance to insulin. Sadly, being in med school does not guarantee you "know what you're talking about", in fact, even after you get to wear that white coat you'll probably realize you know way less than you could ever imagine. The perception that kind of attitude creates only narrows our minds and hurts our patients. I'm done with med school.. and I realize on a daily basis I still have no clue what I'm talking about :)
anonymous 14y ago
Interesting how the book in your link disallows all whole grains, while the linked article specifically point out that the patient's diet consisted of "whole grains, traditional Chinese medicinal foods and prebiotics". They also disallow milk, but allow cheese. My ancestors didn't spend thousands of years evolving lactose-tolerance for nothing, you know.
tlb 14y ago
You can pre-order a kit to get your intestinal biome mapped for $69. See http://www.ubiome.com/ http://www.ubiome.com/

jbattle 14y ago

I thought the problem with refined/processed foods was that they were too easy for our bodies to absorb. Or is that true, but the amount consumed still results in a lot of 'leftovers'?

splatcollision 14y ago
Yeah that seems a little counterintuitive at first, but your assumption is correct. You still absorb lots of cheap calories from the sugars / carbs that you eat, but there's still plenty of leftovers for the bacteria. Everyone's different though - some people may have no issues at all, others are extremely sensitive.

Alex3917 14y ago

"[the pathogen] can induce obesity and insulin resistance via an inflammation-mediated pathway" This is why weed reduces one's risk of diabetes and also often helps obese people lose weight.[1] For what it's worth, you can now actually (supposedly) buy CBD (supposedly) legally online: http://dixiex.com/ http://dixiex.com/ CBD is one of the more common non-psychoactive cannabinoids in marijuana, and it is responsible for many of the anti-inflammatory benefits. While more research is needed, lots of people are reporting the same sorts of benefits that this research is reporting, but without the obvious negative side effects of taking anti-biotics. (Whether there are negative effects of longterm CBD use is anyone's guess, but as far as I know nothing has been discovered so far.) [1] http://blog.norml.org/2012/12/12/study-cannabis-associated-with-lower-diabetes-risk/ http://blog.norml.org/2012/12/12/study-cannabis-associated-w...

splatcollision 14y ago
Great points. The sooner this medicine can be freely accessible and available to all the better.
gamache 14y ago
CBD is most definitely psychoactive. It also accounts for about 25-50% of marijuana's active components, so we are living in a world full of long-term data. Cannabidiol is most definitely illegal in the US, too. That DixieX site you link to is just hemp oil products -- no psychoactives.
- Alex3917 14y ago
  CBD is considered non-psychoactive by fiat. This is because it has a low affinity for receptor sites in the brain and it doesn't cause significant impairment. You may or may not be able to feel it though. And it's definitely not 25-50% of most commercial strains (unless specifically bred for it), that may be true of certain landrace varietals though. Also the amount of cannabinoids DixieX is citing is actually the minimum CBD content. They show their lab results on their Facebook page. The reason the don't cite the CBD content is because CBD is illegal, but hemp products are legal if the THC content is below a certain level. They're trying to play it off as a legal grey area and are taking a calculated risk.

jonnathanson 14y ago

Tangential, but: is the whole obsession with fiber a bit misguided? If polysaccharides are largely responsible for feeding gut bacteria (good and bad), and your link recommends cutting them out, then by definition, we should be cutting out dietary fibers (most of which are polysaccharides). Fiber is mostly undigestible in our stomachs and upper GI tracts, but is readily fermented by (and feeds) intestinal bacteria. Or am I missing something here? Someone with a bit more knowledge of organic chemistry and biology can feel free to chime in here.

sliverstorm 14y ago
Most people are not aware that "fiber" is really just chains of sugar. I suspect this is where a lot of conflicting advice comes from.
hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
The fiber helps your bowels work correctly. We were not created to evacuate bricks. You don't need a PhD in organic chemistry and biology to understand that, just experience with babies.
- jonnathanson 14y ago
  Well, yes and no. A lot of cultures live almost exclusively on carnivorous diets, in which vegetable fiber is extremely rare (if eaten at all). Evidently the fats in the diet serve as lubricants in the absence of the mechanical action that fibers serve in the intestines. I'm not disputing that fibers help "push things along" by absorbing water, adding bulk, etc. But are we overeating them? Do we really need to be making a conscious effort to add or supplement them in our diets? FWIW: I'm not pushing some sort of anti-fiber claim or agenda here. I'm neutral on the subject. I'm simply inquiring.
  - Mz 14y ago
    I think that depends in part on who your ancestors are -- I.e. do you have genes from a carnivorous culture? My exhusband is part Viking, basically. They ate a lot of meat, in part because they lived so far north that you couldn't grow enough plantbased foods. My ex ate a very high meat diet. Our sons eat less meat than he did, but they are 1/4 Norwegian whereas he is 1/2. Still, they tolerate more meat in their diet than I do. I am convinced there is a genetic component here. (Yes I know: Anecdotal and all that.)

Steqheu 14y ago

This is one of the first times I've heard such a confident voice of reason regarding this topic in such a liberal atmosphere. Thank you.

checker 14y ago

Forgive my naivete (I have a passing knowledge about diet), but isn't 'complex polysaccharides' more or less a synonym for 'complex carbohydrates' (excluding oligosaccharides)? I feel that most readily available refined/processed food is low in complex carbs since the processing breaks them down, and because simple carbs are cheaper and taste better. Essentially my question is this: A fresh vegetarian diet is going to be high in the complex polysaccharides that you mention. So why are vegetarians statistically thinner than the average population, if these complex polysaccharides are wreaking havoc on their digestive systems? This whole question breaks down if I'm mistaken about the definition of complex polysaccharide. Thanks.

Udo 14y ago
You are correct to doubt the meaning of these words as they are being flung around for the sole reason of providing credibility. Your mistake is coming with scientific thoughts into a discussion that is utterly non-scientific and purely based on making money with buzzword-laden books by turning anything related to food into a weird cult-like experience. But at least your questions are in an area where I can maybe help out. Carbohydrates are just what the name says: carbon molecules with hydrogen and oxygen attached to them. Complexity of carbohydrates is a spectrum, with formaldehyde being at one end and ultra-complex molecules such as huge amino-saccharides or polymers on the other. Saccharides are sugars, who all belong to the carbohydrate family. As far as nutrition is concerned, most sugars are based on the glucose molecule, that's a unit with 6 carbon atoms typically wound into a ring with six or five edges. Chaining those rings together makes polysaccharides. Overly long saccharide chains only fit into our sweetness taste detectors at one point, that's one ping each from a huge number of saccharide rings. Smaller sugars (like dextrose) cause a lot more signal by fitting better into the detectors, that's why they tend to taste sweeter. Polysaccharide disassembly starts with enzymes in the saliva of the mouth, that's why some things get sweeter when you chew on them for a while. For people who don't gobble down their food to quickly, that means only small sugar molecules even arrive in the small intestine, where they are further split into monosaccharides which can finally be resorbed through the intestinal wall. The small intestine is ill-equipped to handle longer chains, though, that's why they pass into the large intestine. In itself that's not a problem, but if there is a _regular and large_ amount of this stuff in the large intestine, it will attract microbes that live off it. So if a lot of sugars regularly make it into the large intestine, chances are there will be a population of bacteria (or worse: funghi) taking advantage of that. It's not like the bacteria cause obesity as some articles suggest, their presence is itself a symptom of a nutritional problem (such as too much intake). Of course sometimes these colonies cause other problems like inflammatory reactions that eventually necessitate flushing them out. But saying those bacteria cause obesity is just the new "I'm not fat, I'm big boned", a mechanism designed to deflect the responsibility for obesity away from a person's behavior. The digestive system is designed to survive and thrive on a variety of food, but there is also a lot that can go wrong. It's not "evil complex polysaccharides" wreaking havoc and producing energy out of thin air to make people fat, it's (as always) people eating too much who are bringing this upon themselves. One good thing food cults such as the different "nutrition plans" and "strategies" can do, however, is making people reflect on their habits and generally lower their energy consumption. To make it extra clear: I don't think vegetarianism is one of these cults, but it too causes people to eat more carefully.

tarice 14y ago

I've also heard that eating smaller meals, more regularly, can help your body lose weight. This trend correlates well with the above idea, since smaller meals means that the sugars should be absorbed before the large intestine, thereby further robbing the bacteria of their food. It would also explain the opposite effect - that eating larger meals makes losing weight harder, since the larger quantity of food has a better chance to get to your large intestine.

wildranter 14y ago

I went straight to the food list. They lost me at coffee should be VERY weak. They can't take that away from me! :)

Roshini 14y ago

No. It is pretty much impossible to overload your body's ability to absorb carbohydrates without a) exploding your stomach or b) you have some other health problem. By the time the food you eat gets to the bacteria, there are no sugar, fat or protein left. We absorb it all. We store extra of the first two and excrete the third (in a modified form) through urine. Refined/processed food should be eaten in minimal quantities because it spikes blood sugar and causes insulin fatigue, which in the long run causes Type II diabetes. And I'm in medical school, so yes, I do know what I'm talking about.

pnathan 14y ago
> Refined/processed food should be eaten in minimal quantities because it spikes blood sugar and causes insulin fatigue, which in the long run causes Type II diabetes. What precisely does refined/processed food mean, from a chemistry standpoint? Is there a particular common process that transforms my homegrown lettuce into "refined lettuce"?
- sjg007 14y ago
  The refining process breaks down complex carbs into simpler carbs.
beswift 14y ago
>By the time the food you eat gets to the bacteria, there are no sugar, fat or protein left You realize those bacteria are living off the fat, sugar and protein you consume right? They are essential to our ability to utilize the chemicals we get from these macro nutrients. >Refined/processed food should be eaten in minimal quantities because it spikes blood sugar and causes insulin fatigue, which in the long run causes Type II diabetes. True, but this also an increasingly old school and one dimensional way of thinking about how type II develops. There are a host of genetic and environmental factors that effect an individual's response and eventual tolerance to insulin. Sadly, being in med school does not guarantee you "know what you're talking about", in fact, even after you get to wear that white coat you'll probably realize you know way less than you could ever imagine. The perception that kind of attitude creates only narrows our minds and hurts our patients. I'm done with med school.. and I realize on a daily basis I still have no clue what I'm talking about :)

anonymous 14y ago

Interesting how the book in your link disallows all whole grains, while the linked article specifically point out that the patient's diet consisted of "whole grains, traditional Chinese medicinal foods and prebiotics". They also disallow milk, but allow cheese. My ancestors didn't spend thousands of years evolving lactose-tolerance for nothing, you know.

tlb 14y ago

You can pre-order a kit to get your intestinal biome mapped for $69. See http://www.ubiome.com/ http://www.ubiome.com/