Gut Revolution

Gut Revolution

Australian Broadcasting Corporation (2017)

Film Review

This is a three-part Australian documentary about state-of-the-art treatment for various manifestations of gut dysbiosis.* Thanks to genetic sequencing, gut scientists can now identify approximate numbers of bacterial species in patients’ large intestines. In many cases, scientists have also identified the relative helpful/harmful effect of specific species.

For example, in high numbers some bacteria are linked to metabolic syndrome;** some produce sulfuric acid, a cause of irritable bowel symptoms (eg diarrhea, gas, bloating), and some are linked to inflammatory changes leading to depression and impaired cognitive function.

In this series, a dietician works with three patients with very different manifestations of gut dysbiosis: the first suffers from chronic diarrhea, the second from obesity and metabolic syndrome, and the third from severe anxiety, coupled with disabling abdominal paid.

The first patient rebalances her gut bacteria (and eliminates her diarrhea) by starting a low FODMAP diet,*** effective in 70% of patients with irritable bowel syndrome.

The second patient rebalances his gut bacteria by eliminating all processed foods;**** increasing his intake of fruits, vegetables, and high fiber complex carbohydrates; and engaging in a modified fast two days a week. After six weeks he’s lost six kilos, as well as noticing substantial improvement in his mood and energy levels.

The third patient rebalances her gut bacteria with a Mediterranean-style diet. The latter has reduced major depression symptoms in several double blind studies. Due to severe anxiety levels, patient 3 has a long history of severe dietary restriction and also uses yoga and hypnotherapy to make it easier to try new foods.

Link to Part 1: https://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/gut-revolution-a-catalyst-special—part-1/11017218

Link to Part 2: https://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/gut-revolution-a-catalyst-special—part-2/11017246

Parts 1-3 can be viewed free on Kanopy. Type “Kanopy” and the name of you public library into your search engine.

---

*Gut dysbiosis is an imbalance  of bacterial populations in the large intestine. According to a growing number of scientists, your gut microbiome (ie community of bacteria in your gut is just as important as genes and lifestyle in achieving and maintaining good health.

**Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions that increase your risk of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes. These conditions include increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol and/or triglyceride levels.

***A low FODMAP (Fermentible Oligo-,Di-. Mono-Saccharides and Polyols) diet eliminates short chain carbohydrates that are poorly absorbed in the small intestine. High FODMAP foods should only be eliminated for six to eight weeks because most are really important for long term gut health.

****The dietary emusifiers and artificial flavors and colors in processed foods are really damaging to the microbiome.

 

 

Western Medicine: Still Stuck in the 20th Century

Origins

well.org (2014)

Film Review

In brief, Origins is a film about saving the planet by improving your diet and lifestyle. The filmmakers assert that a healthier diet will enable people to think more clearly about the imminent crises confronting civilization. While I totally disagree with the premise – I don’t believe real change is possible without confronting corporate corruption and growing inequality – I liked the film. It offers the clearest explanation yet of the fundamental role of the microbiome* in human health and the rhizophere** in plant health.

Western medicine, as currently practiced, has become totally obsolete owing to its inability to view the human body as a holistic integrated unit. The end result is that roughly half of us are in really poor health. While I disagree with the premise of the film, I’m willing to concede that many of us aren’t healthy or fit enough to tackle major social or political change.

A secondary premise of the film is that we need to fundamentally rethink the way we use technology – mainly because we’re systematically poisoning ourselves through air pollution and toxic endocrine disruptors that mimic estrogen in our bodies. This heavy estrogen effect is a major factor in an epidemic of breast, prostate and other cancers, as well as infertility, obesity and anxiety/depression.

My favorite part of the documentary concerns the microbiome, which turns out to be primary source of our immunity. Owing to the overuse of antibiotics in medicine and agriculture (in livestock feed), most of us have experienced a mass extinction of our intestinal bacteria. This, in turn, plays an even bigger role than toxic chemicals in diseases triggered by inflammation, such as obesity, cancer, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and autoimmune illnesses.

Origins goes on to stress the importance of vaginal birth and breast feeding in establishing a healthy microbiome in infants and the avoidance of antibiotics, antibiotic soaps and commercial household cleaners and toxic chemicals in keeping it that way. Letting kids play in the dirt is another important source of beneficial bacteria. As are are fermented foods and fresh (unprocessed) chemical free foods.

I was also pleased to see the filmmakers brutally debunk the low fat, high sugar, high carbohydrate diet*** Food Inc and western medicine have been trying to sell us for the last fifty years. This is the number one reason half of Americans suffer from “diabesity” (aka metabolic syndrome), even though many of them may not realize it yet.

To their credit, thousands of doctors (according to filmmakers) are taking their patients off GMO foods, resulting in rapid relief of allergies, chronic illnesses and infertility.

I was also pleased to see the comparison filmmakers make between the soil rhizosphere and the gut microbiome. While we’ve been destroying our intestinal bacteria with antibiotics, Food Inc has been systematically destroying essential soil bacteria with pesticides, herbicides and GMOs.

Citing a recent UN study, Origins explodes the myth that GMO technology is the only solution to world hunger. According to the UN, we could double current crop yields in ten years simply by switching to organic farming methods that restore the health and integrity of our soil.

Ignore the background music (I hate documentaries with soppy background music). It’s worth putting up with for the excellent section on diet.

---

* Microbiome, as defined in this film, refers to the millions of intestinal bacteria that are essential to healthy digestion and immunity.

** The rhizosphere is the narrow region of soil that is directly influenced by root secretions and associated soil microorganisms.

***For a great book summarizing the research that debunks the low fat diet, see Why the Low Fat Diet Makes You Fat and Gives You Heart Disease, Cancer and Tooth Decay

The Politics of Obesity

(This is the first of two posts exploring possible links between intestinal bacteria, obesity, and other chronic illnesses.)

Obesity Has Social and Political Causes

In the US, the most overweight country in the world, rates of obesity have doubled since 1980. Sixty-six percent of Americans over 20 are overweight, with half of them qualifying as obese. Seventeen percent of American children are obese. The corporate media – and much of the medical establishment – would have us believe that obesity is caused by poor self-control and bad lifestyle choices. This attitude has led to a growing call for a “fat tax” to penalize naughty fat people who can’t control themselves.

As Americans, it’s part of our conditioning to see social problems as the result of individual shortcomings. This stems from a subtle form of indoctrination designed to disempower us and keep us separate and passive. It’s nonsensical to blame individuals for a condition afflicting a broad cross section of society. Social problems always have political and social causes. Although we have yet to identify all the responsible factors, the only way to treat the obesity epidemic is to identify and address these political and social causes.

Individualized Treatment Doesn’t Work

In the vast majority of cases, individual, case-by-case treatment of obesity doesn’t work. Even bariatric surgery (stomach stapling or similar surgery) doesn’t work in 100% of patients. Most doctors who try to help patients with weight issues are struck that obesity appears to have a strong physical component, like alcohol or drug addiction. Until recently, however, pinpointing a population-wide physical cause has been elusive.

How Obesity Differs from Other Epidemics

Unlike most epidemics, obesity is more prevalent in industrialized countries than the developing world. The circumstances that contribute to obesity must also meet the following criteria:

1. The causative agent(s) or condition(s) has doubled in prevalence since the 1980s.
2. The causative agent(s) or condition(s) clusters in families.
3. The causative agent(s) or condition(s) exerts some effect across all income levels, while disproportionately affecting low income, disadvantaged groups.

Why Obesity Isn’t Genetic

Owing to obesity’s tendency to cluster in families, scientists have been searching for decades for a genetic cause. However except in places like Hiroshima, Chernobyl, and Iraq, where the population has been fried with mega doses of nuclear radiation, genetic conditions don’t cause epidemics. Genetic illnesses increase at the same rate as population. They also tend to be equally prevalent in industrialized and developing countries.

It’s Not Caused by Junk Food, Either

Owing to the greater prevalence of obesity in low income groups, there has been a strong tendency to blame the media messaging that urges all residents of the developed world to consume high fat, high sugar foods. The argument goes that disadvantaged groups are disproportionately affected by corporate advertising owing to epigenetic^* influences, the crazy US food subsidy system that makes junk food cheaper than healthy food, and the growth of “food ghettos”** in major US cities.

This thinking gained a lot of traction about a decade ago with the identification of “metabolic syndrome,” which is also known as insulin resistance. Numerous studies link insulin resistance to “epigenetic” effects, i.e. events that occur during pregnancy and the first year of life. Links have been found between low socioeconomic status and high levels of stress hormones during pregnancy. This, in turn, can permanently alter the way an individual utilizes insulin in regulating blood sugar.

Unfortunately epigenetically-induced insulin resistance and food ghettos don’t explain the rapid spread of obesity to middle and income Americans. Nor the doubling of obesity rates in the past 30 years. I, like most other Americans, have been bombarded with advertising pressuring me to consume high fat sugary snacks as far back as the early sixties. It isn’t logical that this corporate brainwashing would take 20 years to manifest an effect.

The Microbiota and Dysbiosis

In the past five years, new research into intestinal bacteria has finally uncovered a possible “social” cause for the obesity epidemic. The human intestine is colonized by about 1,000 different bacteria, who help digest foods, regulate gut development, regulate immunity and produce essential hormones and vitamins.

The discovery that finally unlocked this riddle came from studies showing a direct link between dysbiosis (i.e. “unhealthy” intestinal bacteria) and the development of insulin resistance. Then other studies revealed that the “microbiota” (our intestinal bacteria) doesn’t recover after antibiotic exposure. In fact, repeated antibiotic exposure encourages the growth of “inflammatory bacteria.” These unhealthy bacteria release an inflammatory peptide known as endotoxin, which causes inflammatory damage in the brain’s appetite center.

While still unproven, this hypothesis meets all the causation criteria laid out above. Even more exciting, it also offers a potential explanation why cancer, chronic degenerative diseases (like arthritis and multiple sclerosis), and autoimmune diseases (like lupus) are also more common in industrialized countries than the developed world. As well as playing a critical rule in immunity, dysbiosis

1. Is more prevalent in the US than anywhere else, owing to the mass exposure of Americans to antibiotics.
2. Has doubled in prevalence since the 1980s, roughly corresponding to comparable increases in antibiotic exposure. This is thanks to the Big Pharma-controlled medical system, a Food Inc that feeds massive amounts of antibiotics to livestock, and antibiotic markers Monsanto inserts into genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
3. Clusters in families. Children acquire their microbiota from their mothers, during their passage through the birth canal and through breast feeding.
4. Occurs at all income levels but is more prevalent in low income groups, due to epigenetic influences and dietary factors.

Research into Treatment

The April issue of Mother Jones has a great article summarizing some of this research. And even more exciting studies showing that diets rich in certain fermented foods can  bring about weight loss by restoring bacterial balance in the intestine.

 

^*Epigenetics refers to alterations in gene expression (i.e. the protein enzymes genes produce) based on environmental influences during pregnancy and early development.

^**Food ghettos refer to the wholesale abandonment of inner cities by major supermarket chains, making it virtually impossible for residents to access fresh fruits and vegetables.

To be continued, with a closer look at the research.

 photo credit: Ed Yourdon via photopin cc

Originally published in Veterans Today