Wednesday, October 8, 2014

oh ... my ... GAWWWWD!

[evil grin]

I always felt dubious about the claim that a low-carb diet STARVES your microbiome, though of course it changes the precise populations, just like any diet followed consistently changes the enzymes your body produces, in order to process it efficiently.  Now i have some interesting food for thought -- my favorite kind, because it causes no unpleasant physical repercussions.  ;-)

Okay, so far we only actually have data on mice, not the best human-surrogate for nutritional matters, but at least it's a starting point.  Somebody i follow on twitter posted this a day or two ago, and unable to find it again, i went to the horse's mouth -- google -- and found what i needed because i managed to remember a key word:

FUCOSE

Check it out:  www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/41134/title/Supporting-the--Good--Gut-Microbes/  -- a sugar i've never heard of before is what saves our little buggy codependants -- if we're mice -- so that when WE starve, deliberately or otherwise, the armies of our tiny master/slaves who help us break down our indigestibles don't become the first casualties of hardship.  OUR BODIES FEED THEM, EVEN WHEN WE OURSELVES ARE NOT FED.

Whoa.  Amazing.

And so much for the people who claim that our poor little gut-bugs go HUUUUUNGREEEE if we don't give them raw potatoes, no matter how much lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, sunchokes, avocadoes, bok choy, nuts, mushrooms, jicama, collards, rutabagas, seeds, squashes, cucumbers, onions, berries, garlic, cauliflower, celeriac, salsify, asparagus, artichokes, broccoli, spinach, cabbage, rhubarb, kale, seaweed, nopalitos, mirlitons, olives, capers, sauerkraut, carrots, turnips, beets, chilis, yams, cassava, plantains, eggplants, celery, bean sprouts, snow peas, sweet potatoes, water chestnuts, okra, endive, hearts-of-palm, bamboo shoots, green beans, etc, that we DO eat....

The studies have not been done on humans, apparently, but if mice can do it, i'll bet we can too.

10 comments:

  1. I believe in the adaptability of a human body, and microbes are more adaptable that humans with much longer history of their evolution. So, based on just common sense, it is hard to believe for me that when my body got used to eating less starches microbiota could fail to get adapted.

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    1. i suspect that if one doesn't use antibiotics or eat sugar, there's little reason to worry about them.

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  2. Having read a considerable number of papers on the matter, it appears to me that the microbiome is basically uncharted territory. I know there are people who have formed strong opinions based on their pubmed trawling, and people who now have taken preemptive diet interventions based on these ideas even though they had none of the dreaded symptoms of RS deficiency (yet). Meh, let them eat paste.

    My great grandmother lived into her 90s despite having her entire colon removed for the last 3 decades of her life. So much for a healthy microbiota being the sine qua non for a healthy long life.

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    1. WOW -- 30 years without a colon and healthy.... you have an excellent point, there! do you have any idea what she ate during that time?

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    2. I don't remember her eating an unusual diet. She just ate the same as everyone. Nobody now knows what exactly led to her total proctocolectomy, but suffice to say intestinal problems certainly run in the family. I have Crohn's myself.
      But, yes, like Larcana says, it is quite common. And especially people with bad cases of colitis ulcerosa can actually really improve their life.
      Then there is the case of David Smith, aka Wolverine, who had I believe perhaps one foot of duodenum left! He did ok on HFLC, but has since had an intestinal transplant.

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  3. Micheal is right...there are a lot of people with hemi or total colectomies running around and living a healthy life. This starch stuff is BS in my humble opinion...the body is very adaptable. And yes, we don't have real human based work on this topic..and I'm done with it.

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    1. Watching how my body adapted to eat fatty foods after my gallbladder was removed amazed me. Soon after the surgery any food was causing diarrhea.
      Richard is fuming that people give up RS after initial horrible farting instead of working on the adaptation. I am not sure it is reasonable to grow GI flora in order to eat raw starch which I don't consume as a food. May be the variety in GI flora is overrated.

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    2. I read Konstantin Monastyrsky's book, Fiber Menace, some time ago and I was a little shocked by his point of view.... however, my intestines work SO WELL on an ultra-LC diet (and so badly when I overdo something like lettuce) that I have to believe the recent preoccupation with gut-bugs seems misplaced.

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  4. May be my prejudgment against RS could be less if I tried not raw potato starch, but something else.

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  5. Yes, try something else. The latest Animal Pharm post doesn't inspire much confidence in raw potato starch; and nor do RN's latest pics. It's all pretty embarrassing, really.

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