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Comment by village-idiot | Hacker News Reader

“Alternative” medical people have been saying it for a few years now: gut health matters a lot.

It’s kind of frustrating having industrialized medicine scoff at people’s experiences, only to turn around and “discover” what they’d been told about repeatedly.

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I dont believe I've had a doctor ignore gut health. Gut Flora is a well known thing, the problem is what works for regulating it properly in different individuals given different diets. I think it's more societally what we consider proper diet is wrong, like all yogurts being just sugar instead of fats.

Gut flora seems to be a case of we know about it but don't really know to how to use it properly and thus reliably. So called probiotics as expected for something that jumps the gun to commercialization from early stages of research tends to have two outcomes - either it does nothing except get excreted or it makes things worse.

There seems to be a history in medicine of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. Hyperdosing vitamin-C boosts the risk of cancer, megadosing antioxidants doesn't seem to actually help, etc. It brings to mind the period in history in which blood transfusion was known but typing wasn't making the procedures quite risky, and cholesterol being considered just one number.

I think this really depends on where you are. When I first developed post-infectious IBS 15 years ago, I went to quite a few Gastros who knew nothing but: scopes, check for ulcers, tumors, diverticula, etc. - and when it all came back negative they happily declare IBS, pat themselves on the back, and tell me to destress, see a shrink, and not come back. Diet, gut flora, intermittent fasting, FODMAPs, none of those things were mentioned once.

I rarely hear alternative medicine proponents saying anything about gut health. Chakras, bach flowers, essential oils, that kind of things.

Really? No offense but you need to read more. I don't go anywhere near their community but I hear about it endlessly.

Then you've not heard from any real alternative medical practitioners, then!

A naturopath who focuses on diet and nutrition will not push this kind of stuff on you! They've known about the gut-brain connection for years, now.

I just realized I raised confusion between proponents and practitioners, sorry. I never reached for a naturopath, only hear about alternative medicine from people into it.

Also: there is a huge range of “alternative” medical practices. Some are straight up quackery, while others are actually interested in science but aren’t following the standard party line.

It’s why I put alternative in scare quotes.

I've read about "the brain in the gut" on and off for about 10 years.

As for "chakras", that is just borrowed eastern holistic philosophies... Chakras are chakras since those areas has large amount of neurons dedicated to them... (genitals, stomach, heart, brain)...

What's discovered here is a specific mechanism. The "gut-brain axis" has been an accepted concept in physiology research for over a decade. The main reason that it's only minimally filtered down to medical practice is that the theory and evidence are too immature to support any concrete diagnostic or treatment process.

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