5 ms·

This article doesn't seem to consider the alternative hypothesis very seriously, so as one of the biohackers Ed is no doubt referring to, I'll do my best to sum

by dlss 12y ago

This article doesn't seem to consider the alternative hypothesis very seriously, so as one of the biohackers Ed is no doubt referring to, I'll do my best to summarize why it's not unreasonable to act before all the data is in. Our knowledge about the microbiome is similar to our knowledge of nutrition: we don't know enough to claim optimality, but we do know enough to say that the modern default is bad. My product is the microbiome equivalent of the paleo diet -- it simply restores non-pathogenic microbes which were the unintended victims of widespread food sterilization. In our (admittedly small) pilot study, over 90% of people felt this helped their digestion. I believe this approach is more cautious than continuing to eat a modern diet. We didn't evolve eating sterile food. http://www.generalbiotics.com/probiotics http://www.generalbiotics.com/probiotics

001sky 12y ago
"we do know enough to say that the modern default is bad." Could you articulate why this statement is even plausible?
- dlss 12y ago
  Interesting. To be clear, the current state of affairs is eating sterilized food (often required by law to control pathogens), and taking antibiotics every 2 years[1]. This is bad a priori, since it's two deviations from the only known good condition -- the one we evolved in. But I take it that argument was non-persuasive. So here are some other people discussing the idea: The hygiene hypothesis[2] is broadly the theory that diseases of affluence[3] are related to living in overly sterilized conditions. Most if not all of the items discussed in [3] are correlated with your microbiome[4], with large studies underway to determine the role in more detail [5]. Okay, hope this helps. To answer your question a third way: most biologists working on the microbiome think it's plausible. [1] http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1212055 http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1212055 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_affluence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_affluence [4] http://academy.asm.org/images/stories/documents/FAQ_Human_Microbiome.pdf http://academy.asm.org/images/stories/documents/FAQ_Human_Mi... -- see pages 11+ [5] We have a bibliography at http://www.generalbiotics.com/science http://www.generalbiotics.com/science edit: my co-founder wishes me to point out that I wrote this was to illustrate why eating ancestrally normal microbes is a plausible idea. Please don't take these links as me saying my product can prevent any diseases -- I don't have sufficient evidence to support that claim.

by dlss 12y ago

001sky 12y ago

"we do know enough to say that the modern default is bad." Could you articulate why this statement is even plausible?

dlss 12y ago
Interesting. To be clear, the current state of affairs is eating sterilized food (often required by law to control pathogens), and taking antibiotics every 2 years[1]. This is bad a priori, since it's two deviations from the only known good condition -- the one we evolved in. But I take it that argument was non-persuasive. So here are some other people discussing the idea: The hygiene hypothesis[2] is broadly the theory that diseases of affluence[3] are related to living in overly sterilized conditions. Most if not all of the items discussed in [3] are correlated with your microbiome[4], with large studies underway to determine the role in more detail [5]. Okay, hope this helps. To answer your question a third way: most biologists working on the microbiome think it's plausible. [1] http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1212055 http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1212055 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_affluence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseases_of_affluence [4] http://academy.asm.org/images/stories/documents/FAQ_Human_Microbiome.pdf http://academy.asm.org/images/stories/documents/FAQ_Human_Mi... -- see pages 11+ [5] We have a bibliography at http://www.generalbiotics.com/science http://www.generalbiotics.com/science edit: my co-founder wishes me to point out that I wrote this was to illustrate why eating ancestrally normal microbes is a plausible idea. Please don't take these links as me saying my product can prevent any diseases -- I don't have sufficient evidence to support that claim.