Over 140k virus species in the human gut, half of which are new to science
sanger.ac.uk
sanger.ac.uk
Just a hypothesis. But the number of viruses in the gut, the vast majority of which we know nothing about, does reveal an awful lot of room for unintended consequences.
My gut has seen a lot from various parts of the world. It's like starting over.
The more places I revisit, the better things have become.
But yeah, significant changes. Ahem... lots of irregularity, as if many foods were new. (and in a sense they were)
The reintroduction idea is valid IMHO, based on some of my own experiences.
I tend to put more of the carrots, onions, and daikon in though as I like that crunch. I don't put in the harder to find ingredients and tend to ferment it a little over a week in a big vessel and then store it in smaller mason jars in the fridge. making carbon dioxide with vinegar and baking soda and then pouring it(just the invisible co2 though!!) over the ferment vessel has been flawless for my ferments. in any event controlled rot is fun... brewing your own kombucha is even easier too... basically making a sweet tea and pouring in a bottle of unflavored and still alive kombucha and it will make it on its own.
But certainly as a treatment - it has merit and wished was explored more. Just wished known about it at the time.
Can you elaborate on this? I'm curious as to the general details.
“ Fluoroquinolones, including CIPRO®, are associated with an increased risk of tendinitis and tendon rupture in all ages. This risk is further increased in older patients usually over 60 years of age, in patients taking corticosteroid drugs, and in patients with kidney, heart or lung transplants (see WARNINGS). Fluoroquinolones, including CIPRO, may exacerbate muscle weakness in persons with myasthenia gravis. Avoid CIPRO in patients with known history of myasthenia gravis (see WARNINGS).”
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2013/01...
All the quinolones also associated with lots of internet reports of ill health in a variety of respects, but tendinitis is the official warning.
Actually I see there is an updated warning about central nervous system damage now too. FDA recommends they only be used as a last resort.
Sorry you had that experience. I had Cipro about ten years ago, wasn’t really necessary. Can’t say for sure it did anything but my reaction was intense while on it, and I had much worsened general digestion and overall health after that point.
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-upda...
I have seen 40+ physicians at Mayo, Rush and other popular hospital networks, only one doctor said it's a possibility. Others outright dismiss it and look for alternative diagnosis.
However, there are some recent discoveries and theories. There was a study which found DNA adducts from cipro, others are looking at mtDNA and collagen issues.
For anyone reading please research any flouroquinolone antibiotic before taking them. It is A SERIOUS medication and not like other antibiotics.
The worst part of FQAD (Flouroquinolone Associated Disability) as it is a thing now, there is ZERO tests to confirm it. If it happens to you, you will be dismissed and ignored by the medical community. I know doctors, pharmacists who had a negative reaction and were outright called crazy by their colleagues. An optometrist who was quite outspoken was dropped by some insurance companies as this view is "controversial". Many older flouroquinolone antibiotics have been taken off the market completely due to severe adverse reactions.
Have any links? And find anything that helped?
I’m doing much better than I was before. But not knowing whether the issues are due to Cipro I also can’t be sure that anything I tried addressed it.
His issues were different than yours, but I think it was the same antibiotic. In any case, worth considering a dietary change.
IMO it's a workaround and doesn't address whatever core issue someone might have, but often with GI stuff we don't have a "cure" so workarounds are all people have.
That seems like a dubious assertion in a thread about peoples intestinal flora being destroyed by recommendations from their "health provider"s.
If you’re zero fodmap for years you lose all the bacteria that digest them and are left even more susceptible.
You could probably sue him. Antibiotics should only be prescribed for salmonella food poisoning (and almost all similar gut problems) in severe cases - normally all you have to do is keep hydrated and you will get over it. Otherwise you run the risk of introducing antibiotic resistance, so such treatments may become ineffective in severe cases.
Not a medic. Used to be a microbiologist.
And I should have said, keep your electrolytes up.
Mostly for boils and related skin infections when I was a child growing up on a farm.
That was seven years ago. I was forced to quit my job. I couldn't travel at all, even across town. I became dreadfully sick with even light physical exertion. After five years of every test, diet, medication, and therapy available to me I was prescribed medication (eluxadoline) which is effective, but costs me $24,000/year and is not covered by insurance. I still have flare-ups once a month but at least I can ride my bicycle again.
I wish I could sue the doctor who stole my twenties from me. But I stand no chance in court.
If your own nearest option is still slow or requires a personally-nominated donor, other providers offering the freeze-dried pills, perhaps even via telemedicine, might be an option. Good luck!
In theory yes, but there is the challenge of avoiding re-infection with the one species you're being treated to eliminate.
In my experience antibiotics were prescribed for acute symptoms that quickly worsened. I don't think they would have delayed my treatment for the hours or days needed to collect a pre-treatment sample.
Kevin rose did a podcast with https://pendulumlife.com/ that made that seem like a great path
I took a lot of anti biotics as a kid. I'm pretty sure it killed off whatever gut microbiome I had multiple times over.
Never really had an issue except for becoming fat. Except for headaches. Which I never really thought about for many many years. You know, just take a pill. Probably took 20 years for me to figure it out somewhat.
This may or may not work at all for you and even for myself I can't really scientifically say anything about it. But what helped me was probiotics. I had to try a lot of them. And it got worse first before it got better while the bacteria were fighting with each other and I'm not sure what would happen if I stopped them.
However the best explanation I have found so far is that these probiotics that have Bacillus Subtilis in them made the difference. I don't want to advertise a specific product but since I've been asked before, what I take is Garden of Life Primal Defense Ultra. I tried others before and the one difference is Bacillus Subtilis. YMMV but worth a try if you ask me. I did combine it with a Keto diet too but I'm no longer on it and still fine.
Also in case you drink beer for example, I get worse when I have beer. Hard liquor? Absolutely fine now with the probiotics but beer still screws me up if I have it for a longer period of time.
In any case "general antiviral" seems to be even worst thing then general antibiotic. Most of bacteria / viruses are commensal, you don't really want to disturb that. For example, bacteriophage viruses are now known to handle some of the 100% resistant bacteria in a matter of days.
IMO, the system is so complex that you should only support the crew that know how to handle that - i.e. your immune system - by providing resources they need (vitamins etc.) and avoid things detrimental for them (sugar, tonsillectomy etc.).
That's why hepatitis C was so difficult to treat. It required a very specific molecule to inhibit an enzyme specific to hepatitis C.
Is this hypothesis too or a fact?
This is how gut bacteria can develop resistance so quickly. They don't have to go through a generational process of breeding and selection. They just share a piece of DNA code that confers immunity and they are good to go.
Let's take a look at this process in action, from the vantage point of the membrane wall of one bacterium:
Type 4 secretion system: ii- Pilus biogenesis
Those guys fight for millions of years. Its also in another dimension of reality we currently do not have much access to (only glimpses).
Some conditions cause severe malabsorption and then doctors medically prescribe digestive enzymes. These enzymes can be effectively used to combat viral infections if you take them on an empty stomach between meals instead of with meals like they are supposed to be used.
Random spontaneous thought: Maybe this is one of the things fasting does that has an impact on health. When you don't eat, digestive enzymes in the body attack microbes. (And the gut is home to 70 to 80 percent of the immune cells in the body. There's a lot happening there.)
Also: one of the things that makes gut issues complicated is you need to keep the stomach sufficiently acid to do its job while trying to address chemical imbalances and other stuff. If your stomach gets to be too alkaline, you can outright start throwing up from inability to digest food at all.
Keep in mind that viruses are made of RNA and DNA is just two strands of RNA bolted together, basically. (Those are laymen's terms, because I'm a layman. If anyone knows the fancier, more accurate explanation, feel free to have at it.)
So there is research suggesting that viruses are actually a source of genetic material for humans.
It helps me to think of all this like some messy, organic soup of code. Or nanomachines exchanging code. Something like that.
DNA is the code that writes physical reality* and it's quite small and gets swapped out and we are only just beginning to understand all that.
(Edit: not all physical reality. Just the biology bits.)
Depending on the species, a virus can contain either DNA or RNA as its genetic material. Check out the Baltimore classification (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_classification) for more info.
> So there is research suggesting that viruses are actually a source of genetic material for humans.
They are! Endogenous retroviruses and the syncytin protein (involved in placental development) are some known examples.
I recommend Bromelain (from Annas stem) as one of those enzymes which is virtually side effect free.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27213168-i-contain-multi...
He is a fantastic writer, and I really enjoyed the book. You might also be familiar with his COVID articles for The Atlantic, which were some of the best coverage of COVID issues throughout 2020.
One of the things the author mentioned a few times is to never assume that something you find around your house has been cataloged or studied before. There are relatively few scientists who study such things.
One of the anecdotes was that someone the author knew discovered two or three new species of insect just by going out into his backyard and looking around.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39088985-never-home-alon...
I am currently undergoing a 2 week FMT course at the Taymount Clinic in the UK. I must say I'm impressed with their professionalism and along with the transplants themselves they also offer advice on lifestyle changes to prevent a reoccurrence of dysbiosis.
It's too early to tell but feel like it is helping. If I have so called "leaky gut" then it will be a few more months before my gut fully heals. The hope is that I'll be able to eat gluten/dairy/sugars again without agonising symptoms of bloating, gas and diarrhoea.
A better analogy is an unknown, minimized language, running on unknown hardware, whose chips run unknown and self-modifying microcode such that the same source code may not even produce the same results.
From all that gather, the cause and effect like one bacteria's waste is another's feed to yet another etc.. I do know yes, we found certain vitamins are made in the gut including many hormones like why is 90% of Serotonin made in colon but bulk of it is used in the brain? It has been found that there are neurons in our gut thus the "2nd brain" Hypothesis.
Not going into specifics, I can tell you without a doubt my fasting has made a huge impact to my health although I'm not doing it long enough >5 days nor often enough. Further that by eating garbage high carb/sugar when back to "normal."
It's been speculated and I believe it's for real that if everyone fasts at least one full day a week and do IM 16:8 the rest. Most of the aliments people are currently dealing with will be almost gone.
I clearly feel going into ketosis after a full day of fasting.
I fast 3-5 days once a qtr and every week I fast Mondays.
If I had the money and motivation. I would start a startup that does the following: At your puberty, you bank/cryofreeze your blood and when you are the pinnacle of your gut/body health in your 20's cryofreeze your stool. Then in your 50-60's, reimplant your stool and your blood. We lose so much along the way, by the time we're in our later age, we need to reconstitute it to reinvigorate your gut and possibly reverse aliments. I truly believe this business model could work.
I would be cautious since they are doing nothing but feeding you what they feel are "essential" gut bacterias.
the danger is, there has to be a balance. You can have an overgrowth that you may not be able to reverse.
Again, I think this article exemplifies what we don't yet know so, a company providing a ready made solution seems a little much?
The best thing you can do for your gut isn't yet practical which is to find a bio/genetic/ethnic compatible person and do an FMT and do the rebalancing this company is promising for real. yeah. a bit futuristic but have been done and proven to work if you need helping an aliment such as Crohn's.
But what does it mean for a virus species to be located in the human gut? constantly reinfecting new stomach cells as they are generated? infecting the bacteria in the gut?
edit: I saw another comment recommending "I Contain Multitudes" so I figured I search it for "virus" (thanks libgen) and found this:
"There are viruses too, in unfathomable numbers – a “virome” that infects all the other microbes and occasionally the host’s cells."
I wonder how anyone is able to study them while making skin care products that never work are more profitable than vaccine research.
You read history and wonder why many emperors wasted their resources on building palaces with gold, but we're even more inefficient today if you compare our resources and population. It's more attractive for kids to become an influencer than a scientist today and probably it always has been just like this.