Why Is There So Much Soluble Fibre In Human Breast Milk?

[jyb]

Can you direct me to a Peat resource that explains how improved thyroid function controls pathogenic bacteria. I thought beneficial bacteria control pathogenic species?
Also, how is pancreatic function related to colon (or broader microbiome) microbiota.
I'm genuinely curious. I really don't know. I thought the health of your pancreas was independent of microbiome mechanisms. More to do with blood sugar regulation etc.

If your health is good, so is your stomach acid, pancreas, all gut motility. That's Peat's view. You get the ability to digest protein and not leave it to feed toxic pathogens in the upper gut. The more material, the more likely it will eventually happen. I never said that having some type of bacteria could not be helpful in controlling some pathogens. I think its plausible. Maybe that if your pancreas is dead, that becomes even more important. But I also find plausible you could get there by getting your digestive system to work by other means. I have not read Peat's view about what exactly keeps colon healthy and how that would be satisfied on various diets.

I am not talking about extreme cases. It is possible that once your are chronically infected or misused antibiotics, you will need work from all perspectives including actively re-introducing species to fight off pathogens.

 

[Stuart]

I am not talking about extreme cases. It is possible that once your are chronically infected or misused antibiotics, you will need work from all perspectives including actively re-introducing species to fight off pathogens.

That's fair enough.
The voice that really raised the red flags for me recently was CSP's bizarre: 'who cares about evolution? We're going to get better results doing it differently now'. Humans are SO arrogant.

 

[narouz]

And I felt encouraged that my lifelong candidiasis responded almost immediately.

Peat does not seem to have much interest in candidiasis--
I mean in the sense that he seems to think
it does not really exist anywhere near the extent claimed by alternative medicine.
Sortuv like he poopoo's what he sees as the overdiagnosis of Lyme disease.

I have been wondering for a long time if part of my gut problems may be candida.
But...my Peat framework doesn't support me there.
And there would seem to be no way to reliably test for candida problems in the gut.

How have you concluded you have had candidiasis, Stuart?

I actually took low dose tetracycline for years to try to address adolescent acne, so I know first hand how devastating antibiotics are to gut health.

I've taken low doses/short term "Peatish" antibiotics as experiments.
I experienced upticks in metabolism during the dosing period,
but shortly thereafter I'd experience a downturn,
reverting to my former state or even worsening.

There is another poster here named thebigpeatowski.
She doesn't post much anymore.
But she had similar results with antibiotics
and chronicled her experience over many months:
http://www.raypeatforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3340&hilit=the+best+of+times

She does not have an appendix.
I do not have an appendix.
You, Stuart, do not have an appendix.

I think the other important thing about SIBO is that it isn't just bacterial overgrowth. It's also yeast/fungal overgrowths -which are unaffected by the antibiotics. Because the good bacteria which keep the yeast/fungal overgrowths in check are knocked about by the antibiotics as well, what antibiotics seem to do is make you a recurrent SIBO basket case.

This would align with classic Candida Infestation theory/patterns.

And Peat wisdom is that the best idea is to aim for a sterile gut???
I don't think any gut on planet earth (not just the human ones) is meant to be sterile. Attempting to make it so just creates gut havoc.
Isn't it far better to work with your microbiome instead of against it?

Indeed.
Actually, when Peat eats his diet, eats his carrot, takes his occasional antibiotics...
I don't think he sterilizes his gut.
But I think he does impact it some.

I think it might've been Suikerbuik
who sent me a link to a scientist studying how microbiomes changed
as the subject human moved to different places, ate different food, etc.
One guy they studied took a trip from the US to Southeast Asia somewhere.
I think they took gut microbiome samples every day,
before the trip and during.
This guy ate at the local restaurants and got a stomach bug--common thing to happen.
For this he took a course of antibiotics.
They mapped the changes in the guy's microbiome during that course,
and it was surprising to me how little the antibiotics affected his microbiome.
There was a definite change,
but it was more on the scale of "putting a dent in it."
And it was a pretty transient dent.

Did that subject have an appendix?
Dunno.

If one has an appendix which stores, let's speculate,
a little bag of helpful replenishing bacteria,
maybe that allows the subject above to bounce back from the antibiotics pretty well.
Maybe it allows Peat to bounce back well too
and to generalize about a little proper antibiotic being a good intervention...

I am speculating, of course.
(Well, Amazoniac would say, I'm confident, that I'm obsessing or being hypochondriacal. )
But it wouldn't seem to me to be unreasonable speculation.
And I could speculate further
that perhaps those without appendixes
(or maybe with other gut dysfunction/weakness)
might actually need to build back good levels of appropriate bacteria
to offset the alleged :) yeast/fungi.
Feed them a food like...soluable fiber, maybe....

 

[narouz]

Antibiotics and sterile gut are only distractions in this discussion in my opinion as they represent extremes.

I may be pulling your meaning off course here, jyb.
But in terms of antibiotics and "extremes"...
Antibiotics are so pervasive in our environment and in standard medical use,
and add to that
that our big influence, Peat, generally sees them as beneficial...

So we may be theorizing about a pattern of gut problems that are widespread,
pretty normal.

 

[EnoreeG]

This is what I mean when I say obsessing over just one aspect and neglecting the whole picture, please check the TABLE 1:
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/135/1/1.full.pdf+html

As you can see, even though milk has some fermentable carbs, it has many immune components along with them. And ironically in that table pboytheeliteofparthenon the milk oligosaccharides are placed in the Antimicrobial category.

Art Ayers wrote about how other stuff in milk is also anti-microbial and therefore less suitable for adults. I'm not sure if I follow him, because then I could ask: what if said adults continue to drink milk and similar products? Of course if your adult diet has lots of vegetable, then it is not surprising that you *need* a very different micro biome than that of a milk-only baby. Each diet has a strong influence. And as I said elsewhere, I believe some diets are more likely to have more requirements, maybe because they are more inflammatory in which case you need more anti-inflammatory action from a carefully developed micro biome. The fact that lactic acid bacteria can be anti-inflammatory and gut lining repair effects despite not colonising the gut that much indicates to me that food and micro biome seem interchangeable to some extent.

Otherwise, although I find this discussion interesting, I'm still not convinced that the root cause of SIBO is bad micro biome. By definition, bad micro biome is involved for sure. But root cause? I find the other theories more convincing. This would not mean that pro-bacteria measures would not be useful, just that they would be unable to prevent SIBO from re-ocuring.

First, I'll just say "yes". I mostly agree.

Where Amazoniac said

What ultimately shapes the microbes is the immune system and the condition of the environment, like acidity, gas composition, movement, etc.

I would say this is giving perhaps too much credit to the "immune system". That is, if he thinks the "immune system is something totally human. On my side of this, the "immune system" is 80% microbes.

But when you say

if your adult diet has lots of vegetable, then it is not surprising that you *need* a very different micro biome than that of a milk-only baby. Each diet has a strong influence.

I agree. The only way I would change the perspective on this is, you don't really have a choice. If you change from drinking milk to eating vegetables, or any other change you can consider making in your food intake, you automatically get a change in your microbiota. The mix changes based on the food because microbes are just like elk vs hogs vs pheasants. They prefer different foods. When you change foods, the mix of microbes changes. Certain species may not get eliminated, but their predominance can get reduced tremendously. Other species will rise based on the new foods introduced, if they contain different fiber.

When you say

Each diet has a strong influence. And as I said elsewhere, I believe some diets are more likely to have more requirements, maybe because they are more inflammatory in which case you need more anti-inflammatory action from a carefully developed micro biome.

I agree. Up to the point and including where you say "you need more anti-inflammatory action...". Definitely when you have more inflammation, you need more anti-inflammation. I just wonder about your use of "carefully developed" microbiome. Are you saying a person can develop their microbiome? And if so, can determine what species will be there, in some designed percentage, from knowing what you want in the way of species and then eating certain foods (or probiotic supplements)? If so, please explain. This seems difficult and out of the skill-set of current knowledge (except for getting a few {8-15} strains of known, beneficial bacteria from a pro-biotic supplement).

But you might just mean by "carefully developed" that one eats a variety of foods that contain a variety of fermentable fiber that will, according to all we know, cause a varied community of microbes to develop in the gut.

 

[Amazoniac]

Otherwise, although I find this discussion interesting, I'm still not convinced that the root cause of SIBO is bad micro biome. By definition, bad micro biome is involved for sure. But root cause? I find the other theories more convincing. This would not mean that pro-bacteria measures would not be useful, just that they would be unable to prevent SIBO from re-ocuring.

It does seem interesting though that populations that eat a huge amount of fermentable fiber like the Hadza never get SIBO. If they did, they'd explode. I eat a prodigious amount of fermentable fiber now and I don't have SIBO either.When I first started reading about prebiotics and their role in gut health and introduced a bit of fermentable fiber, I got immediate bloating and like most people, thought the whole idea was insane. But I just kept hearing from people that those who suffer the most bloating are the ones who need the fermentable fiber the most. And I felt encouraged that my lifelong candidiasis responded almost immediately. So I stuck with it and increased the daily dose very slowly. And to my surprise there was consistent improvement.
Still took about four months, but I now feel SIBO proof.
Antibiotics don't work, because your colon microbiota are trashed as well as the ones you are targeting In your S.I. and the S.I overgrowths come romping back within days as soon as you stop taking them.
I actually took low dose tetracycline for years to try to address adolescent acne, so I know first hand how devastating antibiotics are to gut health.
I think the other important thing about SIBO is that it isn't just bacterial overgrowth. It's also yeast/fungal overgrowths -which are unaffected by the antibiotics. Because the good bacteria which keep the yeast/fungal overgrowths in check are knocked about by the antibiotics as well, what antibiotics seem to do is make you a recurrent SIBO basket case.
And Peat wisdom is that the best idea is to aim for a sterile gut???
I don't think any gut on planet earth (not just the human ones) is meant to be sterile. Attempting to make it so just creates gut havoc.
Isn't it far better to work with your microbiome instead of against it? I mean nature provides us with the real estate ( the colon) , Mum provides us with the foot soldiers (the bacteria) and the rations (the prebiotic effect of HMO's) . Why turn around years later and waste all that hard work setting our microbiome up so well?

I guess that the classic protuding belly of those poor african kids are an example of forcing fermentable carbs. Some claim that it's water retention due to a protein deficient diet after weaning - if I'm not wrong Kwashiorkor means something like after translation. We know that protein-energy malnutrition impairs metabolism in many ways, as a consequence the digestive system. I think that the protuding belly has also something to do with excessive fermentation, with decreased motility, acidity and impaired immune and enzymatic function.
The benefits that people notice from forcing the initial period of bloating doesn't mean that the result couldn't be attained with a diet low in fermentable carbs. It's probably not their increase that solves the situation, but rather an increase in all aspects related to energy and metabolism. Matt Stone has many comments on his blog from people that improved their health (and bloating, overgrowth, etc) by eating a lot of industrialized foods.
Another point is that the more you increase microbial activity in your gut, the more your immune system will be stimulated. With time, if done properly, it can shape pboynaturesmasterpiece what's desirable to maintain and what's not. I guess that this is why avoiding foods rarely resolves the situation; as soon as you add them back, it starts all over again.

 

[Amazoniac]

Enoree, I don't think I'm giving too much credit to our immune system, I think that maybe you're giving too much credit to our microbes. They are protecting ourselves because it's in their interest to do that and they don't want competition. But what ultimately shapes the environment for them is our current health state.

 

[Suikerbuik]

Can be Narouz. Here may be two links, I guess I've put on the forum somewhere:

Friends with Benefits: The Human Microbiome

Eric Alm: A year in the lIfe of my gut microbiome (2012 GET Conference)

Pancreatic function is relatively vulnerable for inflammatory situations. Stellate cells in the pancreas are also receptive to LPS with all kind of results. The regenerative capacity of pancreas, however, is still something of debate. Maybe there is since hope as the liver, which has these cells too, is found to have a profound regenerative capacity.

My corncern with a focus on the microbiome is that it's placed beyond the context of an human organism. All my research and experience thus far tells me that the microbiome, although imporant, is fairly stubborn to changes that try to target it directly, e.g.: 'natural' antibiotics, real antibiotics, probiotics, prebiotics and what not.
The observation that hadza don't seem to have SIBO (is this established?) does not mean that the increased incidence in the west is caused by a lower fermentable fiber intake. I'd find that unlikely to be honest.

 

[schultz]

The reason I even raised this topic is the interesting fact that breast fed babies get 25 g of soluble fiber every day.

I didn't read the whole thread (it's a little long), but read the first few pages and was curious if you could provide me with the source for where it says babies are getting 25g of fibre a day. The number seems inflated to me.

This article says that colustrum has 20-25g of HMO per litre, but I'm guessing a newborn baby doesn't consume much more than a few ounces a day of colustrum.

The article goes on to say that when the milk comes in that it contains about 5-20g/l of HMO. The average amount of milk an infant needs is 3 cups a day which would put the amount of HMO at 15g.

Here is a chart from the article which lists the HMO with an even smaller range of 5-15g/l



At the low end of that range a baby drinking 750ml a day would only be getting 3.75g of HMO and at the high end would be getting 11.25g.


I'm wondering if a mothers diet influences the amount of HMO present in milk. Does anybody know of any articles discussing this point?

I'm sure where individuals fall in that range is affected by a lot of variables. But let's take the low end of that scale - 5g/l . Assuming that a breast fed infant consumes about 2.5 times its bodyweight in breast milk every 24 hrs,
http://www.babycenter.com/400_how-many- ... 287_675.bc
a 7kg baby gets 12.5 g /d. So to provide its colon microbiota with the same amount. a 70kg adult would get 125g. 'And remember, that's only fermentable fiber, not the total dietary fiber in an adult diet.

It does seem interesting that modern humans eat so much less fermentable fiber than they used to for most of our evolution and that babies consume in breast milk ( even using the low end of your scale) and SIBO particularly, but also the huge raft of other gut dysbiosis conditions seem to be a latter day epidemic
In fact SIBO seems to so afflict modern humans that many of them swear blind that fermentable fiber 'doesn't agree with them'.

Sorry for bringing this up again but I want to get these figures correct, considering it is the basis of this whole thread. I feel as though some of your calculations are incorrect.

You're saying at the low end of 5 g/l of HMO a 7kg baby would be getting 12.5 g per day of HMO. In this scenario the 7kg baby is drinking 2.5 litres of milk a day. The average amount of calories in 100ml of human milk is 75 calories. That means this 7kg baby is getting 1875 calories a day.

In reality, the average 8.5 kg, 7 month old baby boy needs 600-800 calories per day, a far cry from 1875 calories. This same boy, based on the 75 calorie average in 100ml of milk, should be getting around 800ml-1200ml a day, with a calorie range of 600-900. Using the amount of HMO from the publication I listed earlier, this 8.5kg baby boy is getting (using the HMO range of 5g-15g/l) anywhere from 4g to 18g of HMO. 18g is using the 15g/l HMO figure combined with the 1200ml of milk a day figure.

You said the low end would be 12.5g but it's more like 4g.

Also,I don't think you can apply these figures to an adult simply by using a weight comparison between a baby and full-sized human. I think it's more fair to do this based on calories. So instead of your monstrous figure of 125g of HMO for an adult, I think a better comparison would be something like (using my boy range scenario) 16g - 72g at a calorie intake of 2,400 - 3,600.

With all that being said, a 7 month old baby boy could be getting as high as 18g of HMO a day, which is an impressive amount and very interesting indeed. I'm still curious as to whether or not the mothers diet plays a role in how much of these HMO's are put into the milk.

Lastly, I've read more of the thread now and it's an enjoyable discussion for sure!

 

[narouz]

Lastly, I've read more of the thread now and it's an enjoyable discussion for sure!

For me, as well, schultz.
Alas, not for cantstoppeating.
For him, it is an abomination in the face of Peat!
(I don't think my friend Such experiences a warm and fuzzy feeling following it either... )

 

[Suikerbuik]

Well Narouz, being honest, I too find Pollack's findings much more interesting. The properties of cells and different states it can be in is more fundamental, and maybe more promising.
keeping it a on topic. I'd definitely try a capsule emitting blue light that is assumed to kill microbes!

 

[Stuart]

Can be Narouz. Here may be two links, I guess I've put on the forum somewhere:

Friends with Benefits: The Human Microbiome

Eric Alm: A year in the lIfe of my gut microbiome (2012 GET Conference)

Pancreatic function is relatively vulnerable for inflammatory situations. Stellate cells in the pancreas are also receptive to LPS with all kind of results. The regenerative capacity of pancreas, however, is still something of debate. Maybe there is since hope as the liver, which has these cells too, is found to have a profound regenerative capacity.

My corncern with a focus on the microbiome is that it's placed beyond the context of an human organism. All my research and experience thus far tells me that the microbiome, although imporant, is fairly stubborn to changes that try to target it directly, e.g.: 'natural' antibiotics, real antibiotics, probiotics, prebiotics and what not.
The observation that hadza don't seem to have SIBO (is this established?) does not mean that the increased incidence in the west is caused by a lower fermentable fiber intake. I'd find that unlikely to be honest.

The only reliable way of diagnosing SIBO is to consume a lot of fermentable fiber - which will automaticaly create bloating ( which is gas in your small intestine with nowhere to go). If the bacteria creating all the gas are where they should be - in your colon - the gas will either get eaten by gas eating microbes, or you'll fart without discomfort. The hydrogen breath test for SIBO is notoriously unreliable. I'm not at all surprised that the Hadza don't experience any bloating from all the fermentable fiber they eat, because I don't either. Nor do breast feeding babies. In ways that may not even be understood as yet, fermentable fiber does seem to protect you from gut dysbiosis. Which for me is one of the reasons...
There is so much soluble fiber in breast milk.
Somebody should start a thread on this subject. It's interesting
All the decision making is taken out of our hands. The HMO's in breast milk are powerful prebiotics, as well as breast milk being probiotic - it's chockers with bacteria. But at weaning we have to start doing it ourselves with the food we eat. Trouble is modern humans aren't doing it well enough, and our guts are suffering accordingly.
And what's even worse, decades of SIBO isn't easy to rectify. Antibiotics don't work at all. Why would they? They don't differentiate between beneficial and pathogenic bacteria. And what is infinitely worse, they aren't target specific - they happily disrupt bacterial populations in your colon - which need to be encouraged, not suppressed. Using fermentable fiber to resurrect the health of your microbiome, in my experience does work, but is very slow.
Or you can take the view that most people here do seem to, that the health of your microbiome is only of secondary importance to the health of your 'real' other body parts. I don't think any parts of our body are more or less important than any other. The whole thing is delicately balanced team effort. And the notion that our microbiome is somehow less important because it consists of 'lowly bacteria' is in my view pretty silly. Mainly because the other stuff would be utterly useless without them.

But I'm sure it works even slower Narouz, when you don't have an appendix. You don't have to gather seed again !

 

[Stuart]

The reason I even raised this topic is the interesting fact that breast fed babies get 25 g of soluble fiber every day.

I didn't read the whole thread (it's a little long), but read the first few pages and was curious if you could provide me with the source for where it says babies are getting 25g of fibre a day. The number seems inflated to me.

This article says that colustrum has 20-25g of HMO per litre, but I'm guessing a newborn baby doesn't consume much more than a few ounces a day of colustrum.

The article goes on to say that when the milk comes in that it contains about 5-20g/l of HMO. The average amount of milk an infant needs is 3 cups a day which would put the amount of HMO at 15g.

Here is a chart from the article which lists the HMO with an even smaller range of 5-15g/l



At the low end of that range a baby drinking 750ml a day would only be getting 3.75g of HMO and at the high end would be getting 11.25g.


I'm wondering if a mothers diet influences the amount of HMO present in milk. Does anybody know of any articles discussing this point?

I'm sure where individuals fall in that range is affected by a lot of variables. But let's take the low end of that scale - 5g/l . Assuming that a breast fed infant consumes about 2.5 times its bodyweight in breast milk every 24 hrs,
http://www.babycenter.com/400_how-many- ... 287_675.bc
a 7kg baby gets 12.5 g /d. So to provide its colon microbiota with the same amount. a 70kg adult would get 125g. 'And remember, that's only fermentable fiber, not the total dietary fiber in an adult diet.

It does seem interesting that modern humans eat so much less fermentable fiber than they used to for most of our evolution and that babies consume in breast milk ( even using the low end of your scale) and SIBO particularly, but also the huge raft of other gut dysbiosis conditions seem to be a latter day epidemic
In fact SIBO seems to so afflict modern humans that many of them swear blind that fermentable fiber 'doesn't agree with them'.

Sorry for bringing this up again but I want to get these figures correct, considering it is the basis of this whole thread. I feel as though some of your calculations are incorrect.

You're saying at the low end of 5 g/l of HMO a 7kg baby would be getting 12.5 g per day of HMO. In this scenario the 7kg baby is drinking 2.5 litres of milk a day. The average amount of calories in 100ml of human milk is 75 calories. That means this 7kg baby is getting 1875 calories a day.

In reality, the average 8.5 kg, 7 month old baby boy needs 600-800 calories per day, a far cry from 1875 calories. This same boy, based on the 75 calorie average in 100ml of milk, should be getting around 800ml-1200ml a day, with a calorie range of 600-900. Using the amount of HMO from the publication I listed earlier, this 8.5kg baby boy is getting (using the HMO range of 5g-15g/l) anywhere from 4g to 18g of HMO. 18g is using the 15g/l HMO figure combined with the 1200ml of milk a day figure.

You said the low end would be 12.5g but it's more like 4g.

Also,I don't think you can apply these figures to an adult simply by using a weight comparison between a baby and full-sized human. I think it's more fair to do this based on calories. So instead of your monstrous figure of 125g of HMO for an adult, I think a better comparison would be something like (using my boy range scenario) 16g - 72g at a calorie intake of 2,400 - 3,600.

With all that being said, a 7 month old baby boy could be getting as high as 18g of HMO a day, which is an impressive amount and very interesting indeed. I'm still curious as to whether or not the mothers diet plays a role in how much of these HMO's are put into the milk.

Lastly, I've read more of the thread now and it's an enjoyable discussion for sure!

Excellent. Stick around. In spite of being so instrumental in this " abomination in the face of Peat'' you'll find I'm up for a good natter about such an interesting topic.
And you're clearly a very painstaking exacting debater too. So I'll try to do likewise.
Speaking of which I went back to that Mothering forum I linked to and mother after mother was reporting that their 3month old babies -all about 7kg- were consuming about 2.5 litres of breast milk a day. I don't have kids, so I'm no expert. But the figures they were quoting did seem reliably consistent. Mainly because the tone of their reports was SO proud! And to be honest, I was pretty impressed that a couple of mammary glands could have such a high output rate.
I do think the body weight comparison is reasonable. Because we are discussing the FUNCTIONAL requirements of a microbiome that has to take care of a particular sized human.
'The litre/d consumption is not open to debate of course. Either they do or they don't drink that much.
But why would all those proud mother's be telling exactly the same porky?

 

[Stuart]

My corncern with a focus on the microbiome is that it's placed beyond the context of an human organism. All my research and experience thus far tells me that the microbiome, although imporant, is fairly stubborn to changes that try to target it directly, e.g.: 'natural' antibiotics, real antibiotics, probiotics, prebiotics and what not.

I don't think you have to 'target' it at all. That's been my point all along. You just have to feed it properly. It can't jump in the car and zip out for a feed. It relies on us because we control the legs of the operation. For all but the last nanosecond of human history eating whole animals/vegetables and fruits kept human microbiomes the world over well supplied with fermentable fiber. The modern world makes it easy to get slack in the microbiome nourishment department and our health has suffered accordingly.

 

[Giraffe]

Assuming that a breast fed infant consumes about 2.5 times its bodyweight in breast milk every 24 hrs,
http://www.babycenter.com/400_how-many- ... 287_675.bc
a 7kg baby gets 12.5 g /d.

7 kg baby x 2,5 = 17,5 kg breast milk/day ???

 

[EnoreeG]

Enoree, I don't think I'm giving too much credit to our immune system, I think that maybe you're giving too much credit to our microbes. They are protecting ourselves because it's in their interest to do that and they don't want competition. But what ultimately shapes the environment for them is our current health state.

And you just know I'm going to add, "And our current health state depends on our microbiome". So that got us nowhere. No biggy.

So what percent of our immune system to you give credit to microbes for maintaining?

BTW, I totally agree that microbes don't want competition (both the pathogens and the beneficials). And I agree that what ultimately shapes the environment for bacteria is our current health state! If we die, the pathogens can feast for a while, but the beneficials mostly die right along with us.

So what percent of our immune system to you give credit to microbes for maintaining?

And do you think there are symbiotic relationships ongoing in our gut, so that 2,3 or a dozen species can benefit from the actions of 1 species?

 

[Suikerbuik]

Assuming that a breast fed infant consumes about 2.5 times its bodyweight in breast milk every 24 hrs,
http://www.babycenter.com/400_how-many- ... 287_675.bc
a 7kg baby gets 12.5 g /d.

7 kg baby x 2,5 = 17,5 kg breast milk/day ???

~70 ml / pound it says (160ml/kg)

 

[Amazoniac]

Enoree, I don't think I'm giving too much credit to our immune system, I think that maybe you're giving too much credit to our microbes. They are protecting ourselves because it's in their interest to do that and they don't want competition. But what ultimately shapes the environment for them is our current health state.

1. And you just know I'm going to add, "And our current health state depends on our microbiome". So that got us nowhere. No biggy.

So what percent of our immune system to you give credit to microbes for maintaining?

BTW, I totally agree that microbes don't want competition (both the pathogens and the beneficials). And I agree that what ultimately shapes the environment for bacteria is our current health state! If we die, the pathogens can feast for a while, but the beneficials mostly die right along with us.

2. So what percent of our immune system to you give credit to microbes for maintaining?

3. And do you think there are symbiotic relationships ongoing in our gut, so that 2,3 or a dozen species can benefit from the actions of 1 species?

1. Oh no, trapped in an infinite loop.
2. I honestly don't know. But they do protect us from a certain degree simply because they are nourishing from our environment or even our gut lining. I have seen some studies on their efficacy at binding to heavy metals and exctreting them, just as an example of their utility.
3. Yes, because the process happens in a cascade. Our waste becomes their nourishment, their waste becomes nourishment for other strains and so on. As another example, it requires 3 steps if I'm not wrong to obtain SCFA via fermentation, each involves different microbes. Even gas is used by them in the intestines.

 

[narouz]

Well Narouz, being honest, I too find Pollack's findings much more interesting. The properties of cells and different states it can be in is more fundamental, and maybe more promising.
keeping it a on topic. I'd definitely try a capsule emitting blue light that is assumed to kill microbes!

Neither am I in the category of the convinced.
But I do find it a reasonable and intriguing exploration.
As you remind,
on this topic of the microbiome,
so little is known...
so it is hard not to be open to new ideas as new information emerges.

 

[narouz]

My corncern with a focus on the microbiome is that it's placed beyond the context of an human organism. All my research and experience thus far tells me that the microbiome, although imporant, is fairly stubborn to changes that try to target it directly, e.g.: 'natural' antibiotics, real antibiotics, probiotics, prebiotics and what not.

I don't think you have to 'target' it at all. That's been my point all along. You just have to feed it properly. It can't jump in the car and zip out for a feed. It relies on us because we control the legs of the operation. For all but the last nanosecond of human history eating whole animals/vegetables and fruits kept human microbiomes the world over well supplied with fermentable fiber. The modern world makes it easy to get slack in the microbiome nourishment department and our health has suffered accordingly.

Stuart-
What are your favorite forms of fermentable fiber?
Could you give us a more granular look at how you choose food for your internal pets?