Using AI To Alter Your Gut Microbiome (Quax Interview)

[Tarmander]

Hey Guys,

This interview is big

Ken has made a site that can analyze your gut bacteria using AI and the best science available on each species and strain.

This might be the foundational way to change your health for the better

I am going to give this a shot. I will use thryve to sample my gut microbiome, and then use Ken's site to analyze it. He says changing the gut bacteria make up in our guts correlates very highly with symptoms of chronic illness. If he is right, changing the bacteria will change our symptoms. I will post my results here

Ep. 49 Interview Ken Lassesen: Using AI to Improve the Gut Microbiome - Quax Podcast

 

[Ihor]

I wonder if there is anything about the pathological strain e. coli that I once discovered in my bacteriological stool analysis.

 

[Tarmander]

I wonder if there is anything about the pathological strain e. coli that I once discovered in my bacteriological stool analysis.

he talks a bit about the beneficial strains of e coli like mutaflor and symbioflor

 

[Ihor]

he talks a bit about the beneficial strains of e coli like mutaflor and symbioflor

The strain that I had was indicated as hemolytic, that is, it has the ability to break host iron cells to get iron, this is one of the bad things that i read about it, the microbiologist who did the analysis study was against an antibiotic, which he thought could to establish a "bacterial imbalance between good and bad bacteria" and suggested probiotics, but I poorly believe in their effectiveness, of those that I tried (lactobacillus rhamnosus, Saccharomyces boulardii) didn't give me anything. I don’t know if this strain is present with me now, I have always been more concerned about the question of whether these bacteria are the cause or the consequence of some kind of pathology.

 

[Tarmander]

The strain that I had was indicated as hemolytic, that is, it has the ability to break host iron cells to get iron, this is one of the bad things that i read about it, the microbiologist who did the analysis study was against an antibiotic, which he thought could to establish a "bacterial imbalance between good and bad bacteria" and suggested probiotics, but I poorly believe in their effectiveness, of those that I tried (lactobacillus rhamnosus, Saccharomyces boulardii) didn't give me anything. I don’t know if this strain is present with me now, I have always been more concerned about the question of whether these bacteria are the cause or the consequence of some kind of pathology.

Did they test for how much of the strain was present vs other bacteria? Meaning is it dominant or just a little bit in there?

 

[Ihor]

These were the results:

- E. Coli (non pathogenic good) - 5*10⁷ (ref: 10⁷ - 2*10⁸)
- Lactobacillus (non pathogenic good) - <10⁶ (ref: ≥10⁶ - 10⁷)
- Bifidobacterium (non pathogenic good) - 10⁸ (ref: ≥10⁷ - 10⁸)
- E. Coli (pathogenic hemolytic strain) - 5*10⁷ (ref: 0)
- Enterobacter cloacae (pathogenic gram-negative) - 5*10⁶ (ref: <10⁴)

I don’t know how good bacteria in this case are opposed to bad pathogenic bacteria in order to determine the ratio of good balance, but in good conditions these pathogenic E. Coli and Enterobacter cloacae should not have been at all, I think that shrien are opposed. If you read a little about them, then they are proteolytic, I have noticed a lot of undigested protein in my stool many times before during constipation, which obviously nourished them, but I don’t know if they arose because of my poor digestion or for another reason.
It’s interesting that for half a year my ferritin fell from 145 to 40, I often drank coffee but ate red meat almost every day, I mean that E. Coli eats iron by breaking up red blood cells and I’m wondering how much these bacteria are involved in this depletion, and also my low copper and ceruloplasmin. It’s also interesting that constipation and poor protein digestion started just about a year and a half ago, when I took them even more, although I took a lot of retinol and liver, iron-copper products for a long time, probably then I damaged my liver / pancreas, then I was on a low A diet but there it seems iron negatively affected me all this time due to low copper and but the constipation for the most part went away, but damaged my gut and obviously created a bad balance of bacteria with undissolved food, although I often made my kefir from sourdough with probiotics with thoughts that what is that balances.
All this, of course, is just a rumor, just these copper / iron, retinol, liver problems, pancreas, bacteria have much in common for me. I will probably do this analysis again soon.

 

[Tarmander]

These were the results:

- E. Coli (non pathogenic good) - 5*10⁷ (ref: 10⁷ - 2*10⁸)
- Lactobacillus (non pathogenic good) - <10⁶ (ref: ≥10⁶ - 10⁷)
- Bifidobacterium (non pathogenic good) - 10⁸ (ref: ≥10⁷ - 10⁸)
- E. Coli (pathogenic hemolytic strain) - 5*10⁷ (ref: 0)
- Enterobacter cloacae (pathogenic gram-negative) - 5*10⁶ (ref: <10⁴)

I don’t know how good bacteria in this case are opposed to bad pathogenic bacteria in order to determine the ratio of good balance, but in good conditions these pathogenic E. Coli and Enterobacter cloacae should not have been at all, I think that shrien are opposed. If you read a little about them, then they are proteolytic, I have noticed a lot of undigested protein in my stool many times before during constipation, which obviously nourished them, but I don’t know if they arose because of my poor digestion or for another reason.
It’s interesting that for half a year my ferritin fell from 145 to 40, I often drank coffee but ate red meat almost every day, I mean that E. Coli eats iron by breaking up red blood cells and I’m wondering how much these bacteria are involved in this depletion, and also my low copper and ceruloplasmin. It’s also interesting that constipation and poor protein digestion started just about a year and a half ago, when I took them even more, although I took a lot of retinol and liver, iron-copper products for a long time, probably then I damaged my liver / pancreas, then I was on a low A diet but there it seems iron negatively affected me all this time due to low copper and but the constipation for the most part went away, but damaged my gut and obviously created a bad balance of bacteria with undissolved food, although I often made my kefir from sourdough with probiotics with thoughts that what is that balances.
All this, of course, is just a rumor, just these copper / iron, retinol, liver problems, pancreas, bacteria have much in common for me. I will probably do this analysis again soon.

interesting.

I got mine done at thryve. I will post the results

 

[Tarmander]

Alright. This is one of the coolest things I have done. I hope the bacteria correlate with symptoms as well as Ken describes. Here is my krona graph:

You can see more Firmicutes (red) verse Bacteroidetes (green) which is supposed to be good for BMI.

After you upload your data to Ken's site, you get this "my biome view" page which goes through every bacteria and where it is relative to the population. I had a few interesting results on that page:

Akkermansia being low is often indicative of having trouble losing weight, which I have always had. So this is a good target to raise

Lactobacillus was very high, like overgrowth levels. This was very interesting because that is not necessarily good. Lactobacillus makes lactic acid and pushes out E. Coli, both of which show up in people with CFS and other chronic illnesses. That is the other crazy thing. I have been taking Mutaflor now for months and you know what is no where on my microbiome test? E. Coli! I wonder if Lactobacillus is just nuking that bacteria as soon as it shows up.

The other interesting finding is I have very low Bifido amounts. Raising those a bit may be a good idea

There are other random species that are high. No idea what these do and no real studies showing anything on them either. They are interesting and I look forward to seeing how they change across more tests

So ken's site has some cool metrics you can see from your microbiome:

Core supplement metrics shows you nutrients being made by your gut bacteria. The percentile is compared to the average person in the database. so my gut bacteria are producing a lot of Niacin compared to the average person in the data base (130%) and not much B5 (60%). I will say I tried B5 as a supplement the other day to test something and felt good on it. I wonder if that is tied in. The other interesting thing is this microbiome test was taken 3 weeks after a round of erythromycin. Obviously vitamin K producing bacteria did not take much of a hit.

The next really interesting thing is the predicted symptoms. This is an amazing page and sure enough, my top predicted symptoms are sleep and fatigue related. These are right on. Any predictor over .6 is a good probability. Odlly enough, it predicted I was an elderly female based on some of the strains of bacteria I had. Hoping that changes as I change the microbiome

muscle weakness, autism, brainfog, hypothyroidism, waking up early...reading this is like reading my medical history

Lastly, in the Advanced suggestion section you can mess around with the options to get suggestions on what would change your microbiome. Shown in next post

 

[Tarmander]

Maybe the reason why vitamin A doesn't work for me

gives you good and bad probiotics

also suggests flavanoids

If you do quick suggestions instead of advanced, you get some different options

I looked into these and a lot are there to raise akkermansia as the research is strong on that, so the algo is selecting for it

Anyways there are other cool things you can do but that is probably good for now. It is such a cool system I hope it works as predicted. I will do another test at the end of this month after making some changes

edit: by the way, I am not financially involved with any of these services. I don't make money from thryve testing and ken's site is free

 

[mangoes]

@Tarmander

thanks for posting this. I uploaded some of my results from a while ago. I got a lot of the same predicted symptoms as you did but in a slightly different order. I also am different to you in that I have a higher bacteriode population over firmicutes.

where do you find the items to increase/decrease?

 

[Tarmander]

@Tarmander

thanks for posting this. I uploaded some of my results from a while ago. I got a lot of the same predicted symptoms as you did but in a slightly different order. I also am different to you in that I have a higher bacteriode population over firmicutes.

where do you find the items to increase/decrease?

After you load your sample in, there are buttons.

Two of them are quick suggestions and advanced suggestions. I took those above from the advanced suggestions button. There is a video there of Ken doing it that explains

 

[mangoes]

Oh ya I found it thanks

 

[Tarmander]

Wanted to update this thread with a new microbiome test

You can see in the new Krona Chart things have shifted quite a bit. Firmicutes are down and bacteroides are up, which correlates with less BMI.

Here are the new predicted symptoms:

Cool story about this. After an experiment with Neem I was having trouble sleeping and experiencing significant anxiety.

I clicked "Comorbid: High Anxiety" and selected the bacteria that it highlighted. I then used those bacteria to create a suggestion and got the following suggestions:

I messed around with the settings and got Cranberry as another option

So I took some cranberry and slippery elm, and the anxiety was gone within a day.

I think that is the power of this system...the ability to find a symptom and get recommendations on how to change the gut bacteria to deal with that symptom. Cranberry and Slippery elm are not anxiety herbs, but they change the microbiome and things change.

Another cool thing I found was that cranberry has been shown in several studies to increase Akkermansia, the bacteria found often to be correlated with less BMI. So kind of digging Cranberry right now

 

[sugarisgreat]

This is interesting. Thanks for posting.

 

[methylenewhite]

Sounds like astrology or human design.

 

[charlie]

I messed around with the settings and got Cranberry as another option

So I took some cranberry and slippery elm, and the anxiety was gone within a day.

I think that is the power of this system...the ability to find a symptom and get recommendations on how to change the gut bacteria to deal with that symptom. Cranberry and Slippery elm are not anxiety herbs, but they change the microbiome and things change.

Another cool thing I found was that cranberry has been shown in several studies to increase Akkermansia, the bacteria found often to be correlated with less BMI. So kind of digging Cranberry right now

Fantastic, thank you for sharing.