Hunter-gatherer lifestyle fosters thriving gut microbiome
nature.com
nature.com
If you're having a baby, the best thing you can do is to supplement b. infantis, especially the robust strain from Evolve Biosystems[3]. The Hadza have more b. infantis[4] which kicks off a set of immune host interactions that have positive effects on inflammation during the critical period after birth[5].
"After around 3 years, the gut microbiota stabilises retaining relative proportions of taxa with adaptations to composition harder to impose,"[6] so I doubt it's diet as much as it is vertical transmission of the right kinds of bacteria that set the infants up for a lifetime of healthy immune response.
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5103657/
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6177445/
3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7352178/
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9894631/
5. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286742...
Genetics matter. I am a FUT2 non-secretor and this effects my gut health tremendously. I had IBD-D for years before I found this out. Before then if I took any pre or pro-biotics it was a nightmare, but that was supposed to be the healthy thing to do.
So sorry, but I do not listen to any nutritional research anymore that over generalizes a genetically diverse population.
By the time you actually get the time to live like how you are supposed to live, you are old, in retirement, fragile from a lifetime of inactivity, and can't make up for your years lost of good physical health that you had to spend at a desk growing lethargic instead.
I frequently do 6 mile walks with my dog, 8 miles would only be about 3 hours. Considering how much time people spend planted in front of a TV each day on average that shouldn't be that hard to hit. Tell you what, have the corpos give me an extra 1.5hrs each day and I'll give up 1.5hrs of TV and then we'll have enough for that 8 miles.
We really need to take back our time from the exploitation class. A lot of problems go away if you work fewer hours a week, but there exist very few jobs that will pay anywhere near a livable wage for that. Like, I could easily survive on half my income if only someone would give me back half my time for it, but that just isn't an option.
Quit your job today and start providing a service for other people if that's what you will.
Another thing, 3 hours a day spent on walking alone seems like a waste of time to me. Walking is a terrible form of exercise, it's meant to save energy. You could run for 20 minutes a day and do strength training for another 30 minutes to an hour and never be in bad shape in your life.
Good job I'm not you then.
I don’t doubt that there are diminishing returns, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that “walking is a terrible form of exercise.” I was just reading _Built to Move_, and they contend that one hour of intense exercise followed by an otherwise sedentary lifestyle does not make you healthy. Walking might not be the best cardiovascular activity, but it is good for your hips, alignment, digestive tract, promotes healthy sleep schedule, etc.
To take it literally, it is impossible for eight billion humans (current world population estimate) to live as migratory hunter-gatherers on earth, even if the planet was terraformed back to how it was ten thousand years ago. It's highly unlikely even eight hundred million people people can live like this. In fact, it's possible there are not enough resources that even eighty million can live like this.
So aside from the terraforming, world population would probably have to shrink to less than 1% of what it is currently.
What changes the equation a little bit though is when we mine or extract resources like fertilizers and oil from below the surface of the planet. That is now adding nutrients and more energy to the system that wasn't around at least in premodern times. All that oil is old biomass anyhow, so burning it and adding it back to the atmosphere would potentially make it available again for species that take advantage of carbon fixation, if we give these species room to accumulate this biomass out of the atmosphere.
It's kind of interesting to think about how even with today's combustion engine tech, we could solve our climate change crises and set the earth to whatever greenhouse gas level we'd like, if we merely strove to balance this system by growing out sufficient biomass.
Abandon the idea of isolated nuclear family living towards more social small communities. Suburban life is terrible for every single happiness metric.
Embrace as much nature as you can. A city park stroll on Sunday ain't enough.
Many jobs still benefit from close proximity to other people and businesses, but cities have no business being 10+ million people and constantly growing, when many of us just spend most of our time behind a laptop screen.
We're at the dawn of an enormous social and civil reorganisation after the massive migration towards cities started in the Industrial Revolution, yet no-one is spending much time thinking about it. The pandemic has massively accelerated the disillusion of city life by knowledge workers, but the only voice we can hear are bosses wanting the return of the status quo, with everybody back in their downtown offices. I would expect more open push-back from us than just grumbling about it on forums.
Maybe it's only me, it feels like it's overdue but we're dragging our collective feet to reimagine better connection between the modern human and our natural roots, especially in the nascent era of climate awareness and loneliness epidemic caused by modern city life.
Why do so many people want to live in the suburbs then? Are they all myopic and stupid?
They want enough space to raise kids. They want a back yard. They want to still be close enough to restaurants and other amenities. They want to be in better school districts. They want to be around less crime.
But no one I know who moved to the burbs is particularly happy about it. They see it as a necessary evil.
The trouble for me personally is that it’s worse on most of the metrics that matters to me.
There are just some things about suburbia that are fundamentally worse and never won’t be. But that involves tradeoffs, and good luck finding or affording a place with a yard in the city. It’s just a bummer that the tradeoffs can be so severe.
At risk of stating the obvious: it depends on what city!
This is one of the things a lot of people say they want but almost nobody really wants. But the truth is that we like the way the western world works too much to give it up.
We like getting Amazon packages the same day we order. We like TikTok. We like pushing a button and getting a car to come pick us up. We like making a ton of money for stressing over deadlines and sitting in meetings run by pointless MBAs.
AKA "What do you mean 'We' Kemosabe?"
Even today, largely surrounded by industrial scale agricultural farming in the Western Australian wheatbelt (making frequent trips into the Murchison quiet zone for radio astronomy work) I don't see much of what you talk about despite people here using cutting edge tech in farming and many doing FiFo (fly in | fly out) work on largely automated mines that in toto shift almost a billion metric tonne per annum.
Western Society has some interesting slices to it that many miss due to being locked into their own bubble horizons.
Of course, we can't realistically go back to the paleolithic but there is a sense that you can't afford to not get a baseline of physical activity in.
No one is more productive being out of shape. You don't get less stressed from being less physically capable.
If a person can't find time in a day for enough physical activity but they are reading this then maybe they are making a poor trade off with their time.
Of course I'm sure it's highly dependent on season and region.
You don't even need to go that far - my Italian grandma who was born in a farming village in the early 1900s, knew dozens of herbs, how you would go about finding them, and how could you use them for this or that other purpose. You can't find any of those herbs in a modern supermarket except maybe for a couple of them.
I feel like we've lost some of our food cultures at some point and we're only starting to realize what we're missing.
* meat: my family is from a village near Rome, Roman traditional cuisine is famously full of recipes that use all sorts of weird meat cuts (pork jowl, internal organs of various animals...) - you won't find most of those in an average supermarket. When it comes to meat, the problem is not just cuts, but also breeds: I live in Australia and it has been extremely hard to find chicken which is not Cornish Cross. In Sydney, you can find heirloom breeds chicken at only a handful of speciality butchers, and prices are very high.
* grains: this is a well known problem, most grain-based products are based on just a handful of varietals. I have to say that the situation is starting to improve: recently, in some upmarket stores, it has become possible again to get products based on some heirloom grains, however they are pricey (example: Pasta Monongrano made from Matt or Kamut flour)
* fish: it is a known problem that fishing boats are forced to throw away certain catch, because certain fish varieties are not "marketable"
the list could continue...
There's probably still an effect in there, but it seems more likely that it's mainly antibiotics that are killing off gut microbiota variety, with an argument to be made for a role of highly processed foods.
Someone studies one group of people at one (modern) time and place -- a group of people who probably don't even exclusively "forage" for their food and other economic activity now as encountered -- and then they, or their readers, assume that what they found is somehow typical of everyone they assign to the category "hunter gatherer", and further assume what people at what other times and places are "correctly" assigned to that category too.
https://apps.worldagroforestry.org/downloads/Publications/PD...
This is a generalization/simplification on my part, but yes.
Hunter gatherers at a minimum are eating different foods throughout the year as seasons change, but even within seasons as different foods become available.
Reflecting on today, I’ve had four different species of fruit, three different vegetables, and two different subspecies of Cheerio. Not to forget the different meats, nuts, and dairy.
Today in the United States, food is so plentiful there is enough to provide a person with the same food every day if that's what they want.
Having a Cavendish banana, Fuji apple and hothouse tomatoes isn't "diversity" as all have basically the same nutrient content [1] which is dwindling rapidly. None of which have manganese for example, because we stripped it from our topsoil long ago.
So yes, eating a handful of legumes and some honey along with a healthy slab of wild meat (which contains everything that the meat ate) could be way more nutritionally diverse than a standard western meat + veg + grain combo. That is effectively the Hadza diet.
[1]https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/vanishing-...
When I graze in the backyard... I don't brush off all the dirt. If there are small bugs on a leaf, I might eat em.
Given everything we know, this doesn’t seem too reasonable to me. I’m sure those hunters and gatherers would have loved a reliable way to purge those parasites from their digestive system. Even better if they didn’t require removing them in the first place.
More like concise critique. Where I pointed out obvious flaw in “hunter gatherers were so healthy and had such a great quality of life not like us” way of thinking.
Their microbiome is more diverse, with "23.4% of microbial species detected in the Hadza infants represent[ing] novel species"[2].
https://chrisryan.substack.com/p/307-jeff-leach-microbiome-e...
Sounds like a large part of the reason for their gut diversity seem to be from not just what they eat, but how they eat it (taking in lots of dirt along with their food).
Think we are learning that a major key to overall health is minimizing the state of inflammation. Poor eating choices, lack of exercise, stressful job / life in general many urban environments tend to promote lifestyles where you could live in a state id constant inflammation.
A call to action, just the kind I have been looking for. It is my duty to give a shit.
The mouth is for clean stuff. The bum is for dirty stuff.
I'm aware that fecal transplants can help cure C diff infections.
Do we have randomized, placebo-controlled evidence that suggests that gut biodiversity is causative of (and not just associated with other lifestyle features causing) good health? It's hard for me to imagine a good way to design such a study.
I thought the rigorously performed research regarding eg probiotics had mostly been disappointing.
Is there any reason to think that food that is good for human health would not also be good for gut flora health, thus heavily confounding much of the non-interventional research?
There seem to be windows where bacterial populations are in flux until the microbiome stabilizes around 3 years of age. It is difficult to modify the microbiome after that. I think our models have to shift so that we prioritize early intervention, especially for those at risk for dysbiosis (like premature and c-section babies).
Here's a meta study for you:
Here we introduce the MicrobiomeHD database, which includes 28 published case–control gut microbiome studies spanning ten diseases. We perform a cross-disease meta-analysis of these studies using standardized methods. We find consistent patterns characterizing disease-associated microbiome changes.
What more do people want? Why is this something people fight?
Some studies have found no differences in alpha diversity[1] when looking at outcomes like longevity. Maybe alpha diversity is the byproduct of healthy flora but it could be possible to engineer a microbiome that was more advantageous for a given population that was less diverse.
I’m not sure this is the takeaway.
I feel there are many unambiguous data points that modern life is measurably better for your body.
Infant mortality rate. Average life expectancy. The mortality rate for mothers during pregnancy. The mortality rate for random injuries (cuts, breaks, etc.). Death by food poisoning. Quality of life, and mortality rates, for mental and physical disabilities.
It seems like, in nearly any circumstance, the modern human body is at considerably less risk than our ancestors.
But there are trade-offs and missteps. It seems we’ve tossed the baby with the bath water in some cases. And getting the baby back further improves modern life.
Consider the top youth killers today: drug overdoses, automobile accidents, firearms, household accidents. These were just not possible ways that people could die in 100,000BC. Yet heart attack and cancer have always led death rates for as long as humans have been counting.
My hunch is that people for the most part have always mostly died of “old age” (cancer, heart attack, pneumonia, infection) for all of human history and while overall rate had dropped - the type has changed to be less random biology and more social-cultural (which is worse IMO)
Though there were no firearms, there certainly were weapons and murder. Even human sacrifice.
Before there were cars, being kicked by a horse was a significant risk. Or being killed by the animals you hunt, like mammoths and other large mammals.
And I'm not sure what you mean by suggesting "household accidents". Accidents were possible before too. And way probably more lethal on average because there were no antibiotics, soap, or blood transfusions.
That being said, if you were to take your average hunter gatherer who is not ill or infected, compare them to your average american office worker, I'd guess you are comparing a slender low bmi person with great endurance, functional strength, and practical knowledge on survival to one who is overweight, doesn't know how to feed themselves without a modern grocery store, only walks to the car, and will probably end up dying sooner due to health issues stemming from being overweight, a poor diet, and general inactivity.
I don't think so. I think the risk is just flattened. We've quashed deaths from injuries and trauma, but chronic disease has been getting worse, due in part to our diet and lifestyles. I'd be surprised if modern people have better vitality and stamina over their lifetime than our pre-agrarian ancestors did.
Malnutrition plagued the Neanderthals by the way. We have skeletons and teeth that show disruption to growth. There's evidence of some groups of gatherers that subsisted on local flora that caused excessive amounts of tooth decay. Modern living results in way healthier people (for the most part).
I suppose my rebut would claim that the diet of the average US adult today is worse than the average Paleolithic person, but that the healthiest US adult would be healthier than the healthiest Paleolithic person.
Worse in some aspects. But the leading cause of death in paleolithic times is thought to be diarrhea from foodborne illness causing dehydration and starvation, which is not such a killer today. Is that included in "diet"? (It would seem to be, because we're talking about effects on gut biome...)
Pretty certain that that accounts for a whole lot of diarhea and death.
It does make me think of how little soil we are in contact with compared to paleolithic persons - I know that B12 is sourced from the soil in our alimentation, but since we wash our produce we don't get any, and if you don't eat meat you need to supplement.
I wonder if there are not other bacterium that we are washing away.
Also remember hearing that it could be picked up on your skin on contact, which is also not something most people do daily.
Properly cooking and cleaning food (and avoiding having to eat raw food) are really important factors, though.
I checked. It's ambiguous:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet#Health_effect...
Anthropologist Debunks the Paleo Diet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNIoKmMq6cs
I know some modern Californians who eat like hunter-gatherers. I wonder if they might be able to monetize their gut flora.
I personally really enjoyed this discussion on this between Andrew Huberman and Justin Sonnenberg (Professor of Microbiology & Immunology at Stanford University): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouCWNRvPk20
Huberman's prior episode is also great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15R2pMqU2ok
Basic takeaway was low sugar fermented food 4-6 times daily. Doable for almost everyone, palate aside.
The Gut Microbes of African Hunter-Gatherers
Like a multi-vitamin that just boosts the diversity in the gut?
Are processed diets changing the physical makeup (thermal?, acidic?) of the gut as well and therefore a pill won’t work?
You'd need to significantly change your diet and lifestyle to have a chance at generating any positive changes to your gut microbiome that will persist.
Even then, it seems to be much more difficult to change things after an early age. Unless you get some magic fecal pills.
See fecal matter transplantation - we're still in the dark ages here.
Now the more wishiwashi things is that some effects have been noticed, like if you have a biome that loves straight sugars, it will lead you to want to keep feeding it sugars, since you're very efficient at getting energy out of it, since you've cultivated a large amount of bacteria that does that well. Some can also affect their environnement to help themselves and damage others.
So it's tough to starve the "bad" and feed the "good".
Ideally, your gut would be used (and optimised) to a whole and full diet that gives you all nutrients.
All this to say - you can take probiotics if you want, but if you don't feed the bacteria you put in there, it's gonna die. So you have to both change your diet AND take probiotics.
A way to do both? Lactofermenting! Just take some foods you like, lactoferment them and eat the non pasturised food. You are selecting for bacteria that feeds on foods you like, and putting both them and their food in your gut. They are going to thrive, while your old flora won't like it.
I recommend making your own sauerkraut or kimchi to start, takes 10 minutes and 5 days of waiting. Costs 2$. Expext to get farty - that's the bad stuff dying and releasing gas.
That just my ramblings and I don't have solid sources on hand, but if you read up on poop transplants this kind of makes sense.
Edit: If you're into sourdough, making a starter is basically selecting for wheat digesting bacterium. So you're kinda doing the same with your flora! (Sourdough isn't a source of probiotics since it's cooked, it's just an analogy)
Think for a moment about the Agricultural Revolution from the viewpoint of wheat. Ten thousand years ago wheat was just a wild grass, one of many, confined to a small range in the Middle East. Suddenly, within just a few short millennia, it was growing all over the world. According to the basic evolutionary criteria of survival and reproduction, wheat has become one of the most successful plants in the history of the earth. In areas such as the Great Plains of North America, where not a single wheat stalk grew 10,000 years ago, you can today walk for hundreds upon hundreds of miles without encountering any other plant. Worldwide, wheat covers about 870,000 square miles of the globe’s surface, almost ten times the size of Britain. How did this grass turn from insignificant to ubiquitous? Wheat did it by manipulating Homo sapiens to its advantage. This ape had been living a fairly comfortable life hunting and gathering until about 10,000 years ago, but then began to invest more and more effort in cultivating wheat. Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn’t easy. Wheat demanded a lot of them. Wheat didn’t like rocks and pebbles, so Sapiens broke their backs clearing fields. Wheat didn’t like sharing its space, water and nutrients with other plants, so men and women laboured long days weeding under the scorching sun. Wheat got sick, so Sapiens had to keep a watch out for worms and blight. Wheat was attacked by rabbits and locust swarms, so the farmers built fences and stood guard over the fields. Wheat was thirsty, so humans dug irrigation canals or lugged heavy buckets from the well to water it. Sapiens even collected animal faeces to nourish the ground in which wheat grew.
I feel like if we moved to sustainable permaculture, and made the rules of land ownership more equitable, we'd solve a lot of the problems that get blamed on 'agriculture'.
Seems we either manage to do that, or we become a permanent underclass in a toxic dustbowl within decades.
You might think differently if someone teleported you into a Papuan clan whose patriarch/matriarch exiled you for some arbitrary reason.
Not starving to death when there's a drought