Do Favorable Bacteria PERMANENTLY Colonize The Intestines?

[narouz]

So are you saying that the dominate strains in our gut are the same strains found in fermented foods?

I'm not sure about this,
but I think so.

Yes from things such as kefir, yogart, kombucha and probiotics. The inflammation and pain was exaccerbated by a diet high in animal products but still came on when following a almost fat free/animal product free diet so im sure it was the ferments. This could be endotoxin load from ferments or maybe the lactic acid feeding other bacteria/yeasts? Im not sure.

Lots of variables at play there, so hard to know what was going on.
You were feeling good before the fermented stuff?
Did you suddenly introduce a large amount of those fermented foods at that time?

 

[Zachs]

Yes i felt good before and after. I tend to get sucked in to mainstream dietary wisdom once and awhile and have a relapse.

Most times, yes it was a fairly large amount or at least a build up to.

 

[lindsay]

I personally think that there is benefit to eating both anti-microbial and "probiotic" foods. Although you will likely never see me opt to buy a probiotic supplement because you can easily make your own probiotic at home using things like sauerkraut or Kefir and potato starch.

From my personal experience, my gut health was much better when I was living in Russia and they eat a ton of fermented foods which I was always curious about - Vitamin salad is one (it's like a fermented cabbage salad that tastes like cole slaw). Also, you can find the popular Korean carrot salad everywhere - that salad is like an RP carrot salad on steroids because it's fermented and usually contains garlic (another natural antibiotic).

Anyhow, at first when I moved there and started eating cabbage, it gave me digestive upset. But then, my digestive tract got used to it and actually began to help it. If the point is keeping the gut clean - either by carrot or laxative (such as cascara) - I don't know why RP is so against eating fermented fibrous foods because they are very good at cleaning the gut. Have you ever eaten sauerkraut? It makes you poop. Pooping is good. Pooping keeps the gut clean. I don't know if it acts as a stimulant laxative or works by bacterial function, but that would be worth investigating with fermented foods.

Also, consider sourdough bread - maybe this is how probiotics work. Have you ever made your own sourdough? Once you create a starter and go to the point of making bread, the starter eats the gluten in the bread and helps it to grow. This makes it easier to digest and more nutrient dense. So maybe probiotics have an effect of eating other nasties in the digestive tract.

However, that being said, most probiotics won't survive the small intestine unless they are in the form of undigestible material - like carrot or resistant starch. You can mix Kefir with potato starch and honey and the starch will carry the "good" bacteria to the lower GI. Works miracles to cure stomach pain - I've done this before. Foods like sauerkraut or a fermented carrot salad would have a similar effect.

 

[narouz]

I personally think that there is benefit to eating both anti-microbial and "probiotic" foods. Although you will likely never see me opt to buy a probiotic supplement because you can easily make your own probiotic at home using things like sauerkraut or Kefir and potato starch.

From my personal experience, my gut health was much better when I was living in Russia and they eat a ton of fermented foods which I was always curious about - Vitamin salad is one (it's like a fermented cabbage salad that tastes like cole slaw). Also, you can find the popular Korean carrot salad everywhere - that salad is like an RP carrot salad on steroids because it's fermented and usually contains garlic (another natural antibiotic).

Anyhow, at first when I moved there and started eating cabbage, it gave me digestive upset. But then, my digestive tract got used to it and actually began to help it. If the point is keeping the gut clean - either by carrot or laxative (such as cascara) - I don't know why RP is so against eating fermented fibrous foods because they are very good at cleaning the gut. Have you ever eaten sauerkraut? It makes you poop. Pooping is good. Pooping keeps the gut clean. I don't know if it acts as a stimulant laxative or works by bacterial function, but that would be worth investigating with fermented foods.

Also, consider sourdough bread - maybe this is how probiotics work. Have you ever made your own sourdough? Once you create a starter and go to the point of making bread, the starter eats the gluten in the bread and helps it to grow. This makes it easier to digest and more nutrient dense. So maybe probiotics have an effect of eating other nasties in the digestive tract.

However, that being said, most probiotics won't survive the small intestine unless they are in the form of undigestible material - like carrot or resistant starch. You can mix Kefir with potato starch and honey and the starch will carry the "good" bacteria to the lower GI. Works miracles to cure stomach pain - I've done this before. Foods like sauerkraut or a fermented carrot salad would have a similar effect.

Another facet of this is intuition--diet and intuition.
I have started threads about this, lengthy ones!,
and not real popular with many here. :P

Not too popular because I take the point of view that
if I'm honest about it
I do not see an optimal Peat diet as intuitive.
Such a diet contains a large volume of foods I tire of,
and cordons off many foods I crave.

I crave some fermented foods, especially at certain times.
Very "intuitively" attractive to me:
kraut, real fermented pickles come to mind.
Some fermented Indian pickle/relish...
So...that's a point I bear in mind.

Another way to look at fermented foods maybe:
Peat doesn't like them,
and it seems mostly because they contain lactic acid.
And also probably because, in general,
he sees the over-arching challenge with the gut
as suppressing overgrowth of bacteria--even the "favorable" ones.

But personally I don't see that this has to be an absolute.
Eating a little bit of fermented foods wouldn't carry a huge lactic acid load.
And--if one is eating the Peat diet that is not supposed to feed bacteria
(low starch)--
and if one is doing other bacteria suppressive Peat moves like carrot salad, etc...
...well, to me, that might be a good formula
that is not terribly unPeatian.

 

[tara]

Where would one have gotten outside sources of bacteria before fermentation was utilized? Sure we would have eaten bacteria from soil and other organic sources, maybe even the odd fermented fruit here and there but certainly nowhere near the amount given in a probiotic supplement. Would that be enough to keep gut flora populated and balanced?

I agree on the unknown of what antibiotics and ingestion of other chemicals play in our digestive health but it also seems that taken a random supplement of the most easily flourishing microbes is kind of a ahot in the dark on whether it will have a favorable effect if any.

Another source is birth - babies inherit mother's intestinal micro-biome. If it's a good one, it promotes good health. If it's messed up it's a liability. Good food helps maintain a favourable balance if it's there to start with.

 

[Blossom]

I was thinking of that too tara! It seems pretty difficult to to permanently and significantly alter our flora once it is firmly established in infancy/early childhood. I'm not saying it can't happen but even a coarse of antibiotics will only usually change it slightly and temporarily. I think that could be one reason RP recommends raw carrot salad or bamboo shoots daily.
If probiotics do anything post antibiotics I think it is to temporarily take up residence until our own normal flora can reestablish. Antibiotics do not eradicate the pathogens they are designed to treat nor do they eradicate our good flora. As far as I understand it antibiotics shift the balance and generally and temporarily reduce numbers of microbes across the board. It's more complicated than that of course but if a person is depleted it is a very temporary solution.
This is a very interesting topic narouz. I wish I had more than just a couple undergraduate microbiology courses under my belt so I could discuss this topic intelligently.
I did read about something (or it may have been a TED talk) called quorum sensing in bacteria recently that was very intriguing but I'm not well versed enough to say much on that either. Maybe some of our scientist would have further insights. I think this is all somewhat of a new frontier even in science.

 

[Suikerbuik]

No babies do not inherit their mother's intestinal microbiome. Depending how they are born natural or by cesarean. Babies inherit their mother's vaginal or skin microbiome. This microbiome goes into transition to several 'states' until about the age of 2,8y? - if I remember correctly. Then you get an adult like microbiome which is stable but not permanent. Rob Knight has some great papers.

 

[jyb]

No babies do not inherit their mother's intestinal microbiome. Depending how they are born natural or by cesarean. Babies inherit their mother's vaginal or skin microbiome. This microbiome goes into transition to several 'states' until about the age of 2,8y? - if I remember correctly. Then you get an adult like microbiome which is stable but not permanent. Rob Knight has some great papers.

Hum babies get bacteria from their mother's milk. How long it colonises the gut I don't know if its been established, but there is at least something.

 

[Blossom]

No babies do not inherit their mother's intestinal microbiome. Depending how they are born natural or by cesarean. Babies inherit their mother's vaginal or skin microbiome. This microbiome goes into transition to several 'states' until about the age of 2,8y? - if I remember correctly. Then you get an adult like microbiome which is stable but not permanent. Rob Knight has some great papers.

Oh thanks Suikerbuik! I was hoping for your input.

 

[HDD]

When my daughter went through 6 months of chemo, it was recommended (by health food store owner that had had chemo) that she take probiotics and l-glutamine. The oncologist said no to probiotics but yogurt and the glutamine were ok. I believe she was concerned with the unknown bacteria from probiotics and my daughters compromised state.

Same daughter was dx with c-diff during her treatment. She took Natren Heathy Trinity which cleared up c. Diff in less than a week. I had forgotten the dr. said no to probiotics previously. :?

More recently, my oldest daughter's baby nurse recommended probiotics for her baby's gas/constipation. Vaginal birth, breastfeeding.

 

[HDD]

My aging father (late 80's) sometimes would get skin cancers on his face. They would appear as small sores that would scab over and sometimes disappear. I noted that they seemed to appear after he would have a round of antibiotics for uti's. He was not on any other medications. I thought the antibiotics upset his gut flora and the bad guys would start winning. Eventually they would disappear (some) or the Dr. would treat the cancers. I always marveled at my dad's nice pink tongue. He never ate yogurt or other probiotic foods. However, he did love good cheese.

 

[narouz]

When my daughter went through 6 months of chemo, it was recommended (by health food store owner that had had chemo) that she take probiotics and l-glutamine. The oncologist said no to probiotics but yogurt and the glutamine were ok. I believe she was concerned with the unknown bacteria from probiotics and my daughters compromised state.

Same daughter was dx with c-diff during her treatment. She took Natren Heathy Trinity which cleared up c. Diff in less than a week. I had forgotten the dr. said no to probiotics previously. :?

More recently, my oldest daughter's baby nurse recommended probiotics for her baby's gas/constipation. Vaginal birth, breastfeeding.

Just listening to NPR today; heard a good discussion about the microbiome.
Particularly, HDD, one medical/academic expert talked about how
fecal implants have emerged as an amazingly effective and fast treatment
for the very difficult and dangerous c. diff.

 

[Suikerbuik]

Sure breastmilk is a source of micro-organisms. About 700 or more if I remember correctly. I am not sure how much correlation there is between the gut and breast milk, but likely quite similar.
Every source you come in contact with shapes, and has a 'chance?' to stay or not, your flora. But the first ~3 years the babies microbiome shifts through different phases and only afterwards it will present like a 'gut' microbiome.

See the quote below.
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/26/11971.full

In contrast to their mothers, the newborns harbored bacterial communities that were essentially undifferentiated across skin, oral, nasopharyngeal, and gut habitats regardless of delivery mode (Table S1), showing that in its earliest stage of community development, the human microbiota is homogeneously distributed across the body. Moreover, we found that the primary determinant of a newborn's bacterial community composition was his or her mode of delivery (Fig. 1A and Table S1). Vaginally delivered infants harbored bacterial communities (in all body habitats) that were most similar in composition to the vaginal communities of the mothers; as expected, C-section babies lacked bacteria from the vaginal community (Fig. 1A and Table S1). On the other hand, infants delivered via C-section harbored bacterial communities (across all body habitats) that were most similar to the skin communities of the mothers (Fig. 1A and Table S1).

articles from Knight can be found here: https://knightlab.colorado.edu/wordpress/?page_id=25

 

[jyb]

Wow, so the baby's bacteria is strongly influenced by just the method of birth (vaginal or C-section)? That's such a short exposure time and yet the effect is long term.

 

[narouz]

I was thinking of that too tara! It seems pretty difficult to to permanently and significantly alter our flora once it is firmly established in infancy/early childhood. I'm not saying it can't happen but even a coarse of antibiotics will only usually change it slightly and temporarily. I think that could be one reason RP recommends raw carrot salad or bamboo shoots daily.
If probiotics do anything post antibiotics I think it is to temporarily take up residence until our own normal flora can reestablish. Antibiotics do not eradicate the pathogens they are designed to treat nor do they eradicate our good flora. As far as I understand it antibiotics shift the balance and generally and temporarily reduce numbers of microbes across the board. It's more complicated than that of course but if a person is depleted it is a very temporary solution.
This is a very interesting topic narouz. I wish I had more than just a couple undergraduate microbiology courses under my belt so I could discuss this topic intelligently.
I did read about something (or it may have been a TED talk) called quorum sensing in bacteria recently that was very intriguing but I'm not well versed enough to say much on that either. Maybe some of our scientist would have further insights. I think this is all somewhat of a new frontier even in science.

Blossom-
Yes, a very complex topic.
Suikerbuik has noted some sources/videos which are very interesting.
One video--noted earlier in the thread I believe, but will check--
shows a talk by a guy who did a study of a couple of people over a few weeks,
tracking the composition of their intestinal microbiomes.

The upshot seemed to be, generally, the stability of those microbiomes.
However, there were temporary disruptions.
One guy moved to some Southeast Asia city for a couple weeks.
As soon as he got there his microbiome shifted dramatically,
mostly--seemingly--because he ate some bad/infectious food.
(I don't think it was clarified whether he took antibiotics for it.)

So...stability, but also disruptions/discontinuities.
I'd like to see a similar study of someone undergoing antibiotic treatments.

In another thread I noted how medical people are now convinced from practice
that fecal implants exert a quick and dramatic healing from C. diff--
a very tenacious and dangerous bacteria.

I guess this is all to say:
I'm not convinced the general view that one's microbiome is etched in stone from birth
and cannot be impacted strongly by outside interventions (or accidents)...
not sure that's true.

It would seem to be a mainstream alternative healing view
that Candida can take over after antibiotic use.
If this is true,
it wouldn't seem impossible to me that anti-Candida interventions might be desirable and effective.

Of course there are other legitimate theories competing with that view.
To take one, the Lita Lee perspective mentioned up thread:
that Candida is not cause of disease, but a result of some more fundamental problem...
I just don't know.

 

[Blossom]

Yeah, I don't know either narouz. When I was in mediocre health and consumed probiotics I couldn't tell one way or another if they made a difference for me. After my health really went down hill I could definitely tell that the lactic acid producing bacterial strains made me feel worse. Like so many things I didn't fully understand what was going on until I started reading Peat's work.
I doubt medicine (conventional or alternative) has it completely right simply because it seems like a relatively new area being considered in human health. I had Candida overgrowth for years that finally subsided after discovering Peat and using flowers of sulfur while working on my metabolism. I know that in my situation probiotic pills and foods weren't the solution but that doesn't mean it is the same for everyone.
Some cases of cdiff are so severe, chronic and debilitating (and potentially life threatening) that a fecal implant might be the best option. It's hard for me to say what I would do in that situation because I haven't had to face that, thankfully. I think that's an extreme case that may sometimes need an extreme intervention but obviously it would be a personal choice.
Those of us familiar with Peat's work are lucky because we have learned some simple and effective measures to help improve our chances of not experiencing a prolonged and dangerous disruption of our flora. Please keep us informed on what you learn on this topic!

 

[jyb]

I doubt medicine (conventional or alternative) has it completely right simply because it seems like a relatively new area being considered in human health. I had Candida overgrowth for years that finally subsided after discovering Peat and using flowers of sulfur while working on my metabolism. I know that in my situation probiotic pills and foods weren't the solution but that doesn't mean it is the same for everyone.

There are studies about helping with internal pathogens like Pylori with bacteria, but ones I've read are with properly fermented milk like traditional culture do with kefir. Not yogurt and not probiotic pills. I often read that the commercial probiotics capsules contains nothing and are much less likely to have an effect in the gut. It becomes intuitive that yogurt/pills may be different than kefir in that aspect, if you try making kefir yourself, you see that the considerations needed to keep the living bacteria alive and happy are much more stringent.

 

[pboy]

there isn't supposed to be any bacteria in the small intestine, where digestion and absorption occurs. The large intestine is only supposed to absorb water and some salts and be a place to form stool and excrete it. In other words, youre supposed to be able to digest everything you can from the food in the small intestine and whatever is left in he alrge intestine you want out asap. You shouldn't need bacteria to 'help digest food', because the place where food is digested is sterile. And if there are bacteria in the colon, they can either eat some of the undigested food and youll get gas and potentially irritants, or you can not have them and the food will still just pass out. Any bacteria is unfavorable. So 'we have to live with them', well, still try to get as little as possible, it doesn't mean to just give up and start helping them along!

 

[narouz]

there isn't supposed to be any bacteria in the small intestine, where digestion and absorption occurs. The large intestine is only supposed to absorb water and some salts and be a place to form stool and excrete it. In other words, youre supposed to be able to digest everything you can from the food in the small intestine and whatever is left in he alrge intestine you want out asap. You shouldn't need bacteria to 'help digest food', because the place where food is digested is sterile. And if there are bacteria in the colon, they can either eat some of the undigested food and youll get gas and potentially irritants, or you can not have them and the food will still just pass out. Any bacteria is unfavorable. So 'we have to live with them', well, still try to get as little as possible, it doesn't mean to just give up and start helping them along!

Yeah...but you haven't entered the twilight zone of Candida, pboy.
If...IF Candida exists...
And IF it can become over-grown due to antibiotic use, for instance...
And IF it makes a biofilm fortress in the cecum,
and even overtakes the small intestine and higher...

Lotta IF's, I know!
But, if the preceding scenario is possible,
then one seemingly (to me, anyhow) reasonable tactic to nudge things back into balance
would be to
1. supplement with stuff that kills/suppresses Candida and biofilm
2. take kefir and certified live probiotics to repopulate with "the good guys"....
3. well...then there is also the nuclear opton: Nystatin enemas!

Ah well...it's a lonely battle...against an enemy that may just be a phantom...
and with no road map from Dr. P....

 

[narouz]

I doubt medicine (conventional or alternative) has it completely right simply because it seems like a relatively new area being considered in human health. I had Candida overgrowth for years that finally subsided after discovering Peat and using flowers of sulfur while working on my metabolism. I know that in my situation probiotic pills and foods weren't the solution but that doesn't mean it is the same for everyone.

There are studies about helping with internal pathogens like Pylori with bacteria, but ones I've read are with properly fermented milk like traditional culture do with kefir. Not yogurt and not probiotic pills. I often read that the commercial probiotics capsules contains nothing and are much less likely to have an effect in the gut. It becomes intuitive that yogurt/pills may be different than kefir in that aspect, if you try making kefir yourself, you see that the considerations needed to keep the living bacteria alive and happy are much more stringent.

Yeah, jyb...I know what you mean.
I made my own kefir for a couple of years,
and from raw cow's milk.