[HN Gopher] Bacteria (and their metabolites) and depression
___________________________________________________________________
Bacteria (and their metabolites) and depression
Author : Luc
Score : 362 points
Date : 2025-01-29 09:54 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| _tariky wrote:
| https://archive.is/QA7qZ
| daoboy wrote:
| So is there a straightforward solution to keeping this out of our
| system and we just...don't?
|
| "Where is this diethanolamine coming from? Well, it's not known
| to be a natural part of either human or bacterial biochemistry.
| Instead, it is an industrial contaminant, sadly, whose ability to
| be incorporated (at low levels) into animal and human lipids
| through the apparently-not-so-picky enzyme cardiolipin synthase
| has been confirmed for decades now."
| bregma wrote:
| Well, most shampoos have a warning label about external use
| only so there is at least some effort to keep it out of a
| person's system.
| krageon wrote:
| It's absorbed through the skin, so that doesn't actually
| solve the issue of having it in your body.
| bell-cot wrote:
| The dose makes the poison. And the phrase "absorbed through
| the skin" admits a very wide range of absorption rates.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Interestingly there are some materials the absorb through
| the skin _far_ faster than you 'd expect. ie. they soak
| in just like a tissue soaks up water.
| sethammons wrote:
| hydrofluoric acid. Get some on your skin, and you don't
| even feel a burn. But within minutes or hours, you may
| have demineralized your bones, causing them to go beyond
| brittle
| gilleain wrote:
| Dimethylmercury, for example.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethylmercury
| bell-cot wrote:
| True...but Hg(CH3)2 is so much of a "MSDS from the 11th
| circle of hell" corner case that only expendables in
| heavily armored moon suits should ever go near the stuff.
| MaKey wrote:
| Yet a German synthesized it in his basement and used it
| to poison a colleague:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/07/german-who-
| poi...
|
| A crime as heinous as the substance that was used. It's a
| miracle that he didn't kill himself or one of his family
| members with it.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| The paper seems to conclude that we do not know the safe
| dose. And we are not talking death, but suffering.
|
| So taken together, there would seem to be good reason to
| continue to continue to unravel the long-hypothesized
| inflammation/depression connection, and particularly in
| regards to possible exacerbating factors such as higher
| levels of M. morganii infection or even higher
| environmental exposure to diethanolamine. We seem to have
| a lot to learn here!
| sethammons wrote:
| the people down voting the idea of skin absorption as a
| meaningful vector for getting things into your body remind
| me of the people a hundred years ago who thought animals
| cannot feel anything.
|
| I'm wondering if the plastics in modern clothing are
| similarly exposing our systems to microplastics -- maybe
| not as bad as cooking in plastic, but a constant light
| abrasion all day, every day, for your whole life.
|
| Our biologies didn't evolve with these synthetics. Not a
| big stretch to think our biologies won't handle them well.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Differently from simple chemical substances,
| microplastics absorption through the skin is kind of an
| extraordinary claim.
|
| Until we get any evidence of it, I'd say the answer is
| no, it doesn't.
| jajko wrote:
| I'd say more nano-plastics. And pathway is more oral
| ingestion or breathing them in when they get loose from
| clothing. For sure, form time to time we breathe in one
| of those super thin 'hair'.
|
| Home dust is visibly composed out of those too and it
| takes just a bit of sunlight to see them dance mid air in
| non-small numbers. It would be impossible to _not_
| breathe them in, or swallow some on food.
| weberer wrote:
| >I'm wondering if the plastics in modern clothing are
| similarly exposing our systems to microplastics
|
| I bet we inhale a lot of it via lint.
| zorrolovsky wrote:
| https://ceh.org/latest/news-coverage/do-your-workout-
| clothes...
|
| Looks like plastics can enter the body through sweat
| glands. I threw away all my polyester workout clothing
| (which I loved to use) because of this concern.
|
| Call me paranoid but I'm going 100% cotton and linen. Not
| keen on getting my hormones disrupted by inhaling and
| absorbing microplastics!
| hinkley wrote:
| Polypropylene seems to be a fairly biologically safe
| plastic. It makes a great base layer. And we serve hot
| foods in it.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Welcome to my hell of understanding. All these molecules were
| "deemed as safe" not because me knew everything about them but
| because we did not care.
|
| This surfactant, diethanolamine, may also prevent the healthy
| function of lipids in the mitochondrial membrane, namely Omega
| 3. When you mess with the mitochondrial membrane you start to
| have issues with oxidative stress and a whole range of
| metabolic disorders.
|
| For example: Cardiolipin synthase deficiency is a condition
| that results in abnormal mitochondrial function and morphology.
| It can be caused by mutations in the cardiolipin synthase (CLS)
| gene. Symptoms impaired viability, decreased mitochondrial
| membrane potential, and defective oxidative phosphorylation.
|
| What you can do: Drink reverse osmosis or deionized water and
| eat as whole and fresh food as you can. Wash your dishes by
| hand and rinse them very very well using the most natural
| detergent you have.
|
| Here is a way to find some DEA free products:
|
| https://www.skinsafeproducts.com/search/products?products_by...
| dgacmu wrote:
| To nitpick slightly, DEA is not a lipid, it's an organic
| amine. It can be inadvertently incorporated into a lipid
| instead of a glycerol, creating a ... weird lipid.
| hinkley wrote:
| Isn't there also something about cancer cells being more
| likely due to metabolic defects in the cells?
| jstanley wrote:
| > it was one of the strongest causal signals in the team's GWAS
| analysis (2,801 microbial taxa and 7,967,866 human genetic
| variants from 5,959 individuals), and it was the only one that
| validated (M. morganii levels versus major depression) when they
| went back and checked multi-year health records taken after the
| original microbiota samples.
|
| I don't know what any of this means, but it sounds very much like
| https://xkcd.com/882/
| adrianN wrote:
| They are aware of this which is why they add that those strange
| lipids have independently been associated with depression.
| genewitch wrote:
| I put a tally mark under "more bacteria than human"
|
| It used to be called the gut feeling column, but once the
| Alzheimer's links were confirmed more strongly i felt it
| needed to be addressed with more gravitas.
|
| I will read the papers tomorrow but this should be easy to
| test, I think? Immediately cease use of any product that
| contains dea or analogs.
|
| And since it's lipidinous, maintain weight? Ia this
| heretical?
| i_love_limes wrote:
| So, it is like that, but it's also not. A couple decades ago,
| with the advent of GWASes, because of all the multiple testing
| that was going on, there was an agreed new p-value threshold p
| < 5e-8. This was to account for multiple testing going on (how
| that number came to be requires more explanation of LD + other
| things).
|
| That is the minimum threshold. This study found that peak was
| at p < 1e-37 or so. But that is where the biological analysis
| begins. Unlike social scientists, we don't stop with the
| statistical correlation, we then go on to look at what we know
| about that gene, the type of mutation, if it's a loss or gain
| of function, what role that gene has in various tissues, etc.
| And mendelian randomization is another way to unpick the causal
| direction of effect.
|
| Not to say this is _the truth_ or causal, but it 's a lot
| closer to causal than what you are implying.
| cluckindan wrote:
| In other words, there is a likelihood of
| 1/10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 that the
| statistical result was due to random chance.
|
| In more casual sciences p < 0.05 is considered the limit of
| significance, i.e. less than 1/20 likelihood of statistical
| testing favoring the tested hypothesis over the null
| hypothesis due to random chance
| drawkward wrote:
| If you are testing a single hypothesis, sure. But nowadays,
| statistics training really weighs on bonferroni correction,
| or other methods to deal with the issue raised by the
| above-referenced XKCD, whentesting multiple hypotheses.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > This study found that peak was at p < 1e-37 or so.
|
| If true, this would be cause for someone to read through the
| study to check there are no maths errors, and if it holds up
| then to take action immediately.
|
| This isn't a "wait for more science to come in and confirm"
| type thing.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > This study found that peak was at p < 1e-37
|
| This is many orders of magnitudes better confidence than any
| physics experiment, it feels unlikely a biological result can
| even be this strong, so it makes it sound like a statistical
| error.
| jakobnissen wrote:
| Bioinformatician here. These kinds of p-values are common
| in these kinds of experiments (GWAS, or association
| studies), and happens almost automatically once you get
| enough statistical power. The big problem is that once you
| have so much statistical power, you get very small p-values
| from small effects, and then the often-overlooked
| assumptions behind frequentist statistics begins to matter.
| Are your samples _really_ idenpendent and identically
| distributed values? No. Are they really normal distributed?
| No.
|
| Also, things like gut microbiome and depression are linked
| through what some people call the _crud factor_, which are
| weak correlations between nearly all social aspects. For
| example, probably depressed people eat differently from
| non-depressed people, causing changes in their gut
| microbiome. Probably, there are variations in human
| population's depression rates and obesity rates (correlated
| with gut microbiome) that somewhat correlate. When you have
| enough statistical power, you see the crud factor
| everywhere.
| i_love_limes wrote:
| Well no. It's not uncommon for p-values to be even lower
| than that. We are talking about a specific SNP (allele)
| having a specific mutation being predictive of a phenotype
| / outcome.
|
| So, a specific SNP mutation being predictive of a gene
| expression / protein is basically a p-value of 0.
|
| Can't speak for physics experiments, but this is almost
| certainly not a statistical error
| davedx wrote:
| Diethanolamine:
|
| General description. Diethanolamine (DEA) is an amino alcohol
| commonly used in the preparation of soaps and surfactants,
| agricultural chemicals and in textile processing. It is used as
| an absorbent for capturing CO2. Its toxic and carcinogenic effect
| has been studied.
|
| Diethanolamine is widely used in the preparation of
| diethanolamides and diethanolamine salts of long-chain fatty
| acids that are formulated into soaps and surfactants used in
| liquid laundry and dishwashing detergents, cosmetics, shampoos
| and hair conditioners.
| tomw1808 wrote:
| I came here wondering if I am the only one not knowing what
| Diethalothingythings are. Thanks.
| 0xEF wrote:
| I think it's important to clarify that DEA is used in
| _industrialized_ processes for soap and detergents. As a person
| who makes their own at home, I can tell you that no home recipe
| I've ever seen has introduced DEA into the process unless I'm
| missing something. I can't speak for shampoo, since I've never
| tried to make it (I purchase shampoo bars from another home
| soap-maker).
|
| Please feel free to correct me, since I'd love to be sure.
|
| I worry about this a lot. I also make my own bread for the same
| reasons; I find that industrialization of consumables is
| introducing a ton of contaminants into our bodies, the effects
| of which we are not fully cognizant of. Where possible, I avoid
| participating in that game because of how I view the trade-off;
| it does not make sense to me to save time by buying the
| products instead of making them at the risk of shortening my
| lifespan.
|
| Again, I'm open to different thinking on this. In recent years,
| I have just felt a powerful draw to get back to basics and
| understand what I am consuming in a responsible way.
| tomw1808 wrote:
| Do you know if the regulations regarding contaminants in both
| soaps, as well as consumables, is more stringent in the EU
| (beyond the "Fanta-to-Fanta" comparison)? In other words,
| would you feel more comfortable eat something basic like
| bread and other consumables from supermarkets in the European
| Union vs the US, or not? Can you eventually share a few
| thoughts on this?
| 0xEF wrote:
| I am not well versed in EU regulations regarding foods,
| aside from a recent experience in Iceland which boils down
| to the Fanta example. That and the fast food chains that we
| view as ubiquitous in the US were either sparse or did not
| exist in Iceland. We did not go in the one we saw, so I do
| not know if the menu was different or not, like one might
| experience in Japan.
|
| Any thoughts I could share are my own concerns and opinions
| based on my experience and observations of the food and
| health industries in the US. It might be best if someone
| more expert on comparing the regulations between the two
| regions chimed in.
|
| I mentioned the bread example because that's what started
| it for me during the Covid Pandemic isolation. I got bored
| and decided to learn to make bread, but did not have much
| to work with, so I found really simple recipes. Bread, as
| it turns out, only needs water, flour, salt and yeast to
| come out tasting absolutely delicious to the point where a
| loaf does not last long enough in my house to go stale.
| When I compared that to industrialized bread (both off the
| shelf and from the ersatz "bakeries" found in some of our
| large grocery chains), I was curious then horrified to see
| the amount of ingredients in those products that offered no
| discernible nutritional value and existed only to make the
| product more shelf-stable or more addictively appetizing. I
| say this as a person who grew up eating Wonder Bread, which
| I absolutely no longer consider to be "bread," but more of
| a sponge-cake.
|
| From there, my wife and I started really looking at the
| products we were consuming and realized that we did not
| really know what was in 90% of them. We were just trusting
| the manufacturers and regulations to keep us safe, because
| that's what we're supposed to do as good consumers, right?
| It was alarming, to say the least, and even more alarming
| is the fact that this is not a new fight in the US, dating
| all the way back the late 19th/early 20th century. When the
| driving force behind regulation is profit margins, the
| rules for evaluating risk to the population start to move
| around in uncomfortable ways, but because of marketing and
| branding, we're taught at pretty early ages to trust these
| companies, sometimes even wearing their symbols as a badge
| of identity.
|
| I'm never going to be one to say "Food company X is trying
| to kill us!" because that does not make good business
| sense. I've said it before on HN, but I'm not convinced
| that a lot of this regulatory slack and the declining
| qualities of our food is meant to intentionally harm us,
| but more born from the short-sighted thinking that allows
| executives to say something like "well, nobody has died
| from chemical X in product 1, yet, and chemical X can
| displace some of the more expensive chemical Z, so, maybe
| we can increase the amount a bit to bolster our profit
| margins?" Then they do it, quietly, and nobody dies, so
| they do it again...and a again. Longitudinal studies are
| cast aside in favor of only focusing on immediate results.
|
| And so, we have things like canned pulverized Parmesan
| cheese that contains sawdust as a filler, which might
| arguably be harmless, but being robbed of product for the
| same price as the old version should also spark our inner
| consumer to go "hey, wait a minute..." even if we ignore
| the possible long term heath effects on the population as a
| whole. Our term for this now is shrink-flation, but it's
| definitely a very old tactic. This became another driving
| force behind my wife and my decision to try and set aside
| time each week to make certain products. We know what we
| are getting for our money, we know what to expect, and we
| know what is going into each one. Do we still buy other
| soaps or get the occasional shelf-stable pie? Yes, of
| course. But is our consumption of these items has plummeted
| to a last resort of convenience or just a rare treat.
|
| Sorry, this turned into a blog post and I'm still skipping
| a lot of the nuances in my thoughts on this matter so
| pardon any disjointed structure in my narrative.
|
| In the end, the lesson I learned can be summed up as _pay
| attention_. Read the labels, do the homework, and decide as
| best you can with the information you have at the time. We
| vote with our dollars, so spend them wisely.
| p_ing wrote:
| Got a bread recipe you particularly enjoy that you'd like
| to share?
| amluto wrote:
| If you haven't baked bread before and want a great
| starting recipe, try Jim Laney's no-knead bread.
|
| Some tips:
|
| 1. You can halve the amount of salt. (1 bakers' percent
| of salt is plenty. I don't know why most recipes call for
| 2%.)
|
| 2. Active dry yeast is obsolete, but that doesn't stop it
| from being prominently sold in grocery stores. Get
| instant yeast instead. SAF Red or SAF Gold are excellent
| choices. Instant yeast will work in a recipe written for
| active dry yeast, but active dry yeast may not work in a
| recipe written for instant yeast.
|
| 3. Get a scale and use it.
|
| 4. You don't actually need King Arthur Bread Flour, but
| you should use a high quality bread flour. I experimented
| once (quite a while ago), and IIRC Gold Medal worked well
| and Pillsbury was okay. King Arthur does make a
| consistent product, which is nice.
| 0xEF wrote:
| Pretty much any of Ken Forkish's recipes. Linked below is
| one that I find really accessible and a great intro for
| folks new to bread baking who want to get a bit more into
| the finesse side of the experience. The way the dough is
| handled is important, I've found, since it's very easy to
| overwork it. Ken does a good job of describing the
| process.
|
| If you were to buy only one bread book, I would highly
| recommend _Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast_.
|
| [1]https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/saturday
| -white...
| dboreham wrote:
| Iceland is also interesting because they don't have over
| the counter drugs (iirc not even acetaminophen). But
| anyone can walk into a clinic, tell them what's wrong and
| if they think it appropriate they'll give you whatever
| drug they think you need.
| tomw1808 wrote:
| I thank you for the blog-post length reply and I am sorry
| I triggered that with my simple question in disguise. I
| knew it was hard to answer.
|
| It is funny that you specifically mentioned the bread. I
| go a fair bit between Austria, Spain, Greece, the UK and
| all around Asia.
|
| We have a lot of really dark and heavy bread in Austria.
| Austrian bread frequently incorporates a variety of whole
| grains, including rye, spelt and whole wheat. Darker,
| denser loaves like Roggenbrot (rye bread) and Dinkelbrot
| (spelt bread) are the norm here. Austrian bread is
| typically made with just flour, water, salt, and natural
| leavening (sourdough or yeast).
|
| I didn't ask you the question to gleam with that, am I'm
| apologizing in advance if its coming through like this.
| My point is the additives. And it might get back to that
| Fanta-to-Fanta comparison, but with so many other
| products, many American store-bought breads contain added
| sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, whereas Austrian
| breads rarely do.
|
| I also think that a lot of additives or chemicals are
| simply banned in the EU leading to a lower shelf life of
| products, but generally more natural products. Like
| Potassium Bromate, ADA, BHA & BHT etc which are banned in
| the EU. Together with the corn syrup found seldom in
| eupean products, or Austrian.
|
| Spain and Greece have less of the black and dark breads,
| but that movement is slowly coming. Spain has a lot of
| really really really great food, and very high quality.
|
| Asia is a different story. There are some artisanal
| bakeries popping up in places like Hongkong, Singapore,
| Thailands larger cities, Malaysia etc. But in general,
| stores have these softy loafs of what we call toast
| bread. But then, they don't eat a lot of bread :)
|
| Not sure where I'm going with this, if at all anywhere,
| next time you come to europe, try some of our bread.
| 0xEF wrote:
| My friend, I have considered going to Europe
| _specifically_ for the bread! And bakeries in general, of
| course :)
|
| Stay healthy!
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Yes, you are incorrect. DEA is in many products, and here is
| a website that show which products do not contain them.
| Diethanolamine used in some dishwashing soaps as a foaming
| agent and emulsifier.
|
| https://www.skinsafeproducts.com/search/products?brand_ids=&.
| ..
| atombender wrote:
| This does not look correct. For example [1]:
| DEA (diethanolamine) and DEA compounds are used to make
| cosmetics creamy or sudsy. DEA also acts as a pH
| adjuster, counteracting the acidity of other
| ingredients. DEA is mainly found in moisturizers and
| sunscreens, while cocamide and lauramide DEA are found
| in soaps, cleansers, and shampoos.
|
| [1] https://davidsuzuki.org/living-green/the-dirty-dozen-dea-
| rel...
| 0xEF wrote:
| Apologies, I'm not clear on what you're pointing out in my
| comment as incorrect. I specified that DEAs are used in
| products that come from industrialized processes, that you
| won't find them in home-made products of the same nature.
|
| I'm using "industrialized" to mean "mass-produced" here, as
| in stuff that comes from a factory rather than a small work
| station in a DIYer home. I wonder if this may be causing
| confusion?
|
| The article you linked is likely speaking of mass-produced
| products, but does not go so far as to specify that (they
| should). I separate the two since they really are quite
| different. If you put one of my bars of soap up against
| Dove, for example, you'll notice that mine do not lather
| nearly as much a Dove, nor do they have that "buttery"
| texture of commercial soaps. DIY soaps typically only need
| lye, distilled water, and olive oil then whatever you want
| to add for scent. DEA does not enter the equation in a
| home-made version.
| benterix wrote:
| I've checked a few shampoos i have at home and fortunately none
| of them had it (they had SLES which has its own problems but
| seems benign in comparison).
| londons_explore wrote:
| I don't think you'd see it on the ingredients list. It would
| be used in the factory for some of the raw ingredients, and
| wouldn't be on the ingredients list because the intention is
| that none ends up in the final product.
|
| Just like you don't see "grass" on the ingredients list of
| yogurt...
| benterix wrote:
| Ouch that seems very bad.
| consp wrote:
| That's how ingredients work, since they should not be in
| there they are not on the ingredient list ... and there
| should be random testing to make sure there is no
| contamination (if you live in a country which has actual
| laws regarding pollutants and contaminants).
| hammock wrote:
| It is on the ingredient list when present. I've seen it on
| many body soaps and shampoos. It could be listed as DEA, or
| as one of the many other items listed in an earlier comment
| in this chain
| flocciput wrote:
| from https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetic-
| ingredients/diethanol...:
|
| The following are some of the most commonly used ingredients
| that may contain DEA: Cocamide DEA
| Cocamide MEA DEA-Cetyl Phosphate DEA Oleth-3
| Phosphate Lauramide DEA Linoleamide MEA
| Myristamide DEA Oleamide DEA Stearamide MEA
| TEA-Lauryl Sulfate Triethanolamine
| Faxanadu wrote:
| I can't believe Lauryl Sulfate is in nearly every toothpaste.
| I don't know if I'm some rare case freak, but that stuff
| butchers my mouth.
|
| It takes less than three days of accidentally using
| toothpaste with that stuff to cause me two weeks of miserable
| mouth hell from all the ulcers that form.
| consp wrote:
| > I don't know if I'm some rare case freak, but that stuff
| butchers my mouth.
|
| Yes, and also get a generalized allergenic test since you
| are obviously alergic to something and it might be a lot
| bigger group than you think.
| foobiekr wrote:
| The connection between canker sores and SLS is pretty
| well known and not rare or caused by some other allergy.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I'm not sure how rare it is, but as an anecdote when I was
| a teen I knew a kid who had a speech impediment and slurred
| their words really bad/was kind of mush mouthed.
|
| We were on a group trip for about a week and had forgot
| their toothpaste and had borrowed someone's 'natural
| toothpaste' stuff. By the end of the week they were far
| more intelligible in speaking and were stating it felt like
| they mouth deflated. They had an undiagnosed allergy to
| toothpaste their entire life and no one had recognized it.
| hinkley wrote:
| I don't know where my parents picked up this trick, because
| everyone looks at me like I'm crazy when I mention it:
|
| Relatively dry mouth. Milk of magnesia. Q-tips. Paint the
| sore spots with MoM. It thickens and forms a film, which
| cuts down on the tenderness.
|
| I would try one spot if I were you. As bad as you described
| it, if that helps more than it hurts you might try gargling
| the stuff.
| hinkley wrote:
| I've taken to rinsing my glasses and bowls before using them
| for liquids. I figure the transfer from a plate to a sandwich
| can't be bad enough for me to go full OCD on this (and wet
| sandwiches are weird), but if it's coffee or soup I'm
| definitely getting a dose of any residues the dishwasher
| leaves. The higher efficiency ones have been clocked leaving
| more detergent residue behind.
| zabzonk wrote:
| Well, as a pathogen (god knows what is going on in our guts, or
| our skin, come to that) it is rare, as article says. I worked in
| an NHS microbiology lab in the 70s and never came across one -
| probably wouldn't have known how to do so. One of our consultants
| might (he was obsessed with anaerobes) might have, but there are
| so many that might (or not) be associated with wounds that they
| are very hard to identify.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| They are talking about in in the gut, not on wounds. Morganella
| morganii has a commensal(maybe) relationship within the
| intestinal tracts of humans.
|
| It may be more pathogenic than we thought if it causes
| increases in IL6.
| zabzonk wrote:
| almost all bacteria and viruses (and most other things) have
| a commensal relationship with us, otherwise we would would
| have all be gone into grey goo. i wouldn't wory about our gut
| fauna.
| Dowwie wrote:
| to access the report, click "accepted version" in the left-hand
| margin
| https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/items/9a051aa7-0fa4-46a5-88...
|
| I ran the study through NotebookLLM and asked for some applied
| insights.
|
| Prompt 1: based on the contents of the paper and logical
| deduction, what steps can someone take to apply the lessons
| learned from this study?
|
| Response 1: [a little too scientific...]
|
| Prompt 2: explain this in more common terms and concepts
|
| Response 2:
|
| Okay, here's an explanation of the study's findings in simpler
| terms:
|
| This research paper explores how our genes and diet affect the
| community of microbes living in our gut, and how these
| interactions can impact our health. It's like looking at the
| complex ecosystem inside us and trying to understand how
| different factors influence its balance. The study used a large
| group of people and analyzed their genes, gut microbes, diets,
| and health records to find these connections.
|
| Here's a breakdown of what it means and how you can think about
| applying it to your own life:
|
| * *Your genes play a role in your gut:* Just like you inherit
| traits like eye color from your parents, you also inherit
| tendencies that affect the types of microbes that thrive in your
| gut. The study found many specific genes that are associated with
| the presence of different bacteria.
|
| * *Lactose Tolerance and Gut Bacteria:* * One key gene is called
| *LCT*, which determines if you can digest milk sugar (lactose) as
| an adult. If you're lactose intolerant (meaning your body
| struggles to digest lactose), and you still eat dairy, you might
| see more of a specific type of bacteria called _Bifidobacterium_
| in your gut. This is because when you are lactose intolerant the
| undigested lactose makes it to your colon where it becomes food
| for your gut bacteria, which can lead to increased
| _Bifidobacterium_ growth. * However, just because you have more
| _Bifidobacterium_ doesn 't necessarily mean it's beneficial, it
| could mean that your body isn't digesting lactose properly. * If
| you are able to digest lactose, eating dairy will not affect the
| amount of _Bifidobacterium_ in your gut. * The study also noted
| that *other types of bacteria* are affected by the LCT gene,
| suggesting that the impact of this gene on your gut is complex
| and depends on your dairy intake.
|
| * *Blood Type and Gut Bacteria*: Your ABO blood type, like A, B,
| AB, or O, also affects your gut microbes, along with your
| secretor status, which indicates if you secrete blood antigens in
| your gut mucosa. * The study suggests that people who secrete
| blood antigens in their gut tend to have higher levels of the
| bacteria _Faecalicatena lactaris_. * This bacteria also appears
| to be a very efficient metabolizer of these blood antigens. *
| This means that people with different blood types may have
| slightly different gut microbiomes and might need to take that
| into account when they make diet or lifestyle choices.
|
| * *Fiber and Gut Bacteria:* Eating a lot of fiber is generally
| good for your gut. However, the study found that the bacteria
| _Faecalicatena lactaris_ does not easily switch to digesting
| fiber. This means that even if you eat a lot of fiber, this
| bacteria might still prefer to feed on other things, such as
| secreted blood antigens. Other mucin-degrading bacteria are more
| likely to switch to fiber when it is available.
|
| * *Gut Microbes and Mental Health*: * The study suggests that
| there may be a connection between a specific gut microbe called
| _Morganella_ and depression. This highlights the *gut-brain
| connection*, meaning that what happens in your gut can affect
| your brain and your mental health. * The study also suggests that
| the _MED13L_ gene is associated with _Enterococcus faecalis,_
| which may be linked to a higher risk of colorectal cancer.
|
| * *What You Can Do:* * *Consider your genetics:* You can get
| genetic testing to see if you have some of the gene variations
| discussed in the study, like the one for lactose intolerance.
| This will help you understand how your body works and help you
| make dietary choices. * *Pay attention to your diet:* What you
| eat strongly affects your gut microbes. If you're lactose
| intolerant, you may want to consider whether dairy is good for
| you. You might also want to consider if you should eat more
| fiber, and what type of fiber would best support a healthy gut. *
| *Be mindful of the gut-brain connection:* Keep your gut healthy
| as it might have an impact on your mental well-being. * *Talk to
| a professional:* The study is complex, so it's best to discuss it
| with a doctor or a registered dietitian before making big changes
| to your diet or lifestyle. * *Remember that research is ongoing:*
| This study provides valuable information, but the authors
| recommend further research into several of these connections.
|
| In short, this study underscores the idea that our gut is a
| complex ecosystem that is influenced by our genes, our diet, our
| blood type and a host of other factors. By understanding these
| interactions, we can take better care of our overall health.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| So glad I am not the only one here interested in personal
| genomics.
|
| For example; I a FUT2 non-secretor. Understanding this changes
| my life and my IBD. I also have NOD2 polymorphisms linked to
| Crohn's and skin problems. Also Lactose intolerant so...
|
| Understanding this led to the reduction of so much of my pain,
| mental and physical.
|
| I also have a Partial PNP Deficiency but I will let you look
| that up.
| Dowwie wrote:
| what did you change in your diet / lifestyle after you
| learned about your genetic makeup?
| zhs wrote:
| Yes! I'm also curious what specific changes you made related
| to your IBD protocols backed up by your genetic
| predispositions.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Presence of FUT2 and FUT3 also have very interesting impacts
| on CA19-9 levels, which affects cancer detection -
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23958938/
| alecst wrote:
| I can't go into too much detail here, but I interrupted a severe
| depression by fasting for two straight weeks. It's hard to say
| why it worked -- my friends assume that the microbiome is
| implicated because of the dietary change. Plausible, but hardly a
| proof. This gives me at least one direction to look in.
| mateus1 wrote:
| Interesting, I had a bout of depression that I believe started
| when I did a monthlong low carb low calorie diet (with doctors
| and nutritionist). Gut health is a huge factor.
| goda90 wrote:
| Low carb and low calorie for a month sounds rough in general.
| Maybe the depression could be attributed to exhaustion and a
| suppressed metabolism as well.
| stewarts wrote:
| Very individualized. I have drastically better gut health,
| skin health, energy when on a low carb diet for an extended
| duration.
|
| Maintaining that diet for an extended duration, however, is
| always the challenge when others in the household do not
| follow it. Logically, I should stop being a baby and just
| power on with it. Or at least determine what in my "normal"
| western diet negatively impacts gut health/skin health and
| overall energy.
| digbybk wrote:
| As an alternate theory, I've always thought that deliberate,
| controlled suffering gives you a mood boost. Or rather, the
| relief after the suffering has ended. The theory is that it's
| not good for us emotionally to be comfortable continuously.
| Maybe fasting is an example of that?
| pwillia7 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asceticism
| k__ wrote:
| I read somewhere, if you fast, the body thinks you can't find
| food, so it gives you more dopamine to motivate you to find
| more.
| chefandy wrote:
| That's personality-specific. My Dad is like that and doesn't
| understand why nobody else in the family gets off on self-
| imposed austerity. (He's a great guy by the way -- we all
| have our quirks.) He loves to say it's a lack of discipline,
| but it's not-- I quit smoking after a decade-and-a-half of
| heavy smoking, lost 20% of my body weight on an 800 calorie
| per day ketogenic diet, worked many very difficult jobs, and
| did a number of other things that have required sustained
| discipline, as have others in the family. He doesn't
| understand that the difference is that he _enjoys_ self-
| imposed misery and the feelings of superiority he gets from
| it, which not only leads to a lack of balance in his life,
| sometimes strains his closest relationships.
| digbybk wrote:
| "Enjoys misery" is an oxymoron I think. He enjoys joy,
| which he gets from doing difficult things. I'm just taking
| your dad's side on this because I suspect I share some of
| his tendencies :)
| chefandy wrote:
| Ok, rather than enjoying self-imposed misery he enjoys
| the process of imposing and Meta state while experiencing
| self-imposed misery.
|
| You know, I think you might be right. ;-)
| codr7 wrote:
| Or challenges, overcoming seemingly impossible obstacles,
| I need that to feel alive.
|
| But it's all for me, I have no cravings for telling other
| people. The exception would be if I see a possibility to
| inspire someone.
| jajko wrote:
| Does he not understand the situation even when you lay it
| so bare in front of him? People tend to get off the course
| sometimes on their own, but smart mature ones prefer honest
| correcting feedbacks (to certain extent), if it means ie
| better more stable relationships with closest ones
| chefandy wrote:
| He's pretty hard-headed, but so are his middle-aged sons.
| These days we're all grown-up enough to know when to sort
| of shake our heads and change the subject. My mom has her
| own way of setting boundaries which seems to work for her
| but unless she wants to talk about something specific,
| it's normally nothing I need to even think about. She
| feels comfortable enough confiding in me though. To be
| clear he's a 100% stand-up guy, doesn't have an anger
| problem, and even though he can be frustrating to deal
| with sometimes, there is never a question about him doing
| what's best for his family, even if that means swallowing
| something he's annoyed by if it's necessary.
| jancsika wrote:
| > My Dad is like that and doesn't understand why nobody
| else in the family gets off on self-imposed austerity.
|
| My gut feeling: men of a certain generation seem to have
| confused the skill of _seeming_ aloof-- like when meeting a
| stranger or thrust in a new situation-- for _being_
| emotionally unaffected in general. One sign I associate
| with this would be talking only in the past tense about
| having felt certain emotions, but you never really witness
| the person feeling or expressing those emotions (outside of
| anger /frustration). Alternatively, the person may never
| really engage in discussions about certain negative
| feelings, unless it's to offer low-effort problem-solving
| advice to others.
|
| This is difficult because there are obviously times when a
| small, seemingly insignificant problem can trigger an
| outsized emotion. It's natural and helpful to be able to
| sit with that negative emotion-- to feel it, express it and
| talk about it as an emotion _you are experiencing_ -- to be
| able to eventually come to terms and get to know better
| whatever it is that's driving it. It's scary to do, but
| most people have some techniques for doing it.
|
| If you have few or no tools to do that, it must generate an
| immense amount of stress. Hence wacky alternative stress-
| relieving techniques that are more physical and less
| emotional in nature. (Plus the projection of "lack of
| discipline" makes me wonder if he'd feel shame from sitting
| with a negative emotion.)
| patcon wrote:
| > One sign I associate with this would be talking only in
| the past tense about having felt certain emotions, but
| you never really witness the person feeling or expressing
| those emotions (outside of anger/frustration).
| Alternatively, the person may never really engage in
| discussions about certain negative feelings, unless it's
| to offer low-effort problem-solving advice to others.
|
| That's really insightful! Thank you. Saving your words in
| a scratch note for later
| bitcoin_anon wrote:
| This reads like a description of someone with an avoidant
| attachment style.
| dkarl wrote:
| That's a lot of psychoanalyzing of people you don't know.
|
| If it helps give you some perspective, I've been through
| a decade of therapy and years of group therapy, and I
| haven't found that my interest in "discipline" lessened
| or became less relevant as I've come to grips with
| emotional issues and learned to relate to people in
| different ways. There hasn't been much interaction
| between the two, except that when I'm doing well at one I
| tend to do better at the other, for the obvious reasons.
|
| An alternative explanation is that voluntary suffering is
| a comforting reminder that you can do it when you need
| to, as well as an effort to maintain that ability. My
| observation is that people who engage in "gratuitous"
| suffering are people who were raised by parents who
| didn't pass on the basic skills of discipline (among
| which are important emotional skills) and had to learn it
| from scratch later in life. Since they didn't grow up
| with it, they don't take it for granted, and they exhibit
| the "zeal of the convert." Or, if they never achieve it,
| the persistent lack keeps it at the front of their minds.
|
| The parent poster seems to have quite a lot of discipline
| but doesn't feel any need to remind himself that he has
| it. Maybe that's because he learned it as a child from
| his father?
|
| My father had a hard and restricted life growing up, and
| he wanted me to grow up in a more free and easy way. He
| wanted me to feel free to goof off and enjoy myself. I
| certainly learned that, but I also grew up with a lot of
| anxiety about my inconsistent ability to apply myself to
| things I cared about. Sometimes I did, and thrived, but
| very often I disappointed myself. I was especially poor
| at boring things and things where consistency mattered,
| such as taking care of my health, but often, even at the
| things I was good at, I failed to put in effort at a
| crucial time and screwed up something that was important
| to me. My easygoing father wasn't going to tell me I
| "lacked discipline," but my frequent underperformance and
| self-failure told me loud and clear.
|
| So I spent years figuring it out and getting better at
| it. Like anything that doesn't come "naturally" (i.e.,
| wasn't learned in childhood) it has always felt like an
| artificial bolted-on part of myself that could fall off
| at any moment. So I consciously tend to it. I don't show
| more discipline in my life than other people, but I
| certainly show more interest in it, and I do some things
| that probably seem weird to other people. Other people
| probably think it's a meaningless focus that has no
| impact on my life, since I'm not conspicuously different
| in my habits and accomplishments. But not being
| conspicuously different is the accomplishment!
|
| A lot of people can relate to the effort required to
| maintain a healthy weight after growing up overweight.
| People who take a healthy weight for granted might think
| that an above-average amount of attention and effort
| should yield an above-average physique, or what's the
| point? They might feel amused or condescending towards
| their friend who thinks and talks so much about what they
| eat but looks very average. They might get annoyed that
| their friend declines an extra round of drinks or skips
| dessert. What's the point? It's not like they're
| maintaining a fabulous physique. They look like anyone
| else, even slightly below average. Clearly their
| obsession with eating doesn't accomplish anything other
| than annoying the people around them. But it does
| accomplish something. It lets them be closer to normal.
| chefandy wrote:
| I've seen that in people though I don't think it really
| describes him, specifically. He just really enjoys a lot
| of things in life the way some people really love getting
| the most punishing workouts possible, and would probably
| do it even if there were no health benefits.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| +1 insightful
|
| A good technique to help w this is "affective labeling"
| (sorry, citation needed, I think I got it from one of
| Anne Laure Le Cunff's typically awesome
| newsletters/posts). Set a 5m timer, start writing words
| that describe your emotions and don't stop writing for
| even 2s till the 5m are up.
| codr7 wrote:
| I don't find it difficult to talk about negative
| feelings, as long as no one is listening. Talking to
| other people is mostly useless these days, they're all
| busy hiding from themselves.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| Austerity is not the same a misery. In some ways I live an
| austere life but I am happy. Misery comes from poverty not
| self imposed austerity; the first is often imposed by the
| outside world whereas your father's and my austerity are,
| as you say, self imposed and under our own control.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Austerity often comes naturally with age, just because
| spending money requires effort and energy older people
| don't have.
| chefandy wrote:
| You're making arbitrary definitions for those words.
| Austerity can absolutely lead to misery and some of the
| happiest times in my life have been some of the most
| impoverished.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| > Austerity can absolutely lead to misery
|
| I didn't say that it couldn't, merely that it doesn't
| necessarily do so.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| This... Reads a touch like baby manic depression.
|
| Certainly, the highs feel better if you're coming from a low;
| but I tend to prefer my highs coming from mids. I will say
| that, although not a low, the sweet relief of getting through
| a stressful situation/project is great.
| nkozyra wrote:
| There's a flip side to that, which is anhedonia. If you're
| always at a mid, it's kind of harder to get the highs. But
| you avoid the lows, I suppose.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Anhedonia is sometimes used to refer to 'flat affect',
| which I guess could be taken as 'mid', but usually it is
| used to describe a lack of joy/desire that is quite
| common in major depressive episodes.
| sporkland wrote:
| This interview about dopamine and homeostasis in the body
| would support the idea that resetting that system through
| suffering would likely be a valid approach:
|
| https://youtu.be/R6xbXOp7wDA?si=iUUfMZe05DO0wR5K
| alecst wrote:
| I'm no stranger to discomfort. I enjoy it. Like, my bed is a
| piece of plywood with a blanket on it.
|
| The increase in energy and clarity of my thinking, the tingly
| feeling in my body, and the improved sleep quality -- just to
| give you a few examples -- are hard to attribute to the
| mechanism you're talking about. To add to that, I regularly
| fast for five days at a time and I have not yet experienced
| the same kind of mental difference. This time I pushed it to
| two weeks because my energy levels continued to fluctuate
| upward until the 12th or 13th day.
|
| You do feel a lot of relief that the boredom of fasting is
| over. But that effect lasts maybe a day or two or three.
| Certainly not months.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > Like, my bed is a piece of plywood with a blanket on it.
|
| Other than the potential for mold accumulation (you
| definitely want some air to circulate), this is not
| actually a bad bed base for sleep quality. Depending on
| your size, it's likely better for you than some very
| expensive plush mattresses.
|
| Plywood has give to it that a hardwood wouldn't, so what
| you're sleeping on isn't entirely rigid anyway.
|
| But drill some holes in it :)
|
| I fast somewhat frequently, and I don't really associate it
| with pain or discomfort, but I'm also doing it for 24-48
| hours.
|
| Extremely long fasts (like your two weeks) should come with
| a disclaimer, they're not for everyone.
| p_ing wrote:
| > I've always thought that deliberate, controlled suffering
| gives you a mood boost.
|
| That's not an alternate "theory".
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/theres-
| scientific-...
|
| > People who self-harm, writes Arnold, have "learned that,
| while the pain peaks with self-injury, it then comes down the
| other side. The physical pain lessens - as does the emotional
| pain."
|
| People don't self-harm because it hurts. They self-harm
| because it _feels good_. Pain is "pleasure", for lack of a
| better phrase.
| vdjskshi wrote:
| Most of them self harm because the removal the pain feels
| good - and it takes with it some emotional pain.
|
| Though there probably are some masochists that truly enjoy
| the pain, but that's a different condition than the more
| common I-hate-myself-so-I-hurt-myself.
| p_ing wrote:
| > removal the pain feels good
|
| Not quite. The pain causes an endorphin release. It's
| also addictive (not technically by the DSM sense, but
| those who do will often call it as such) and has been
| compared to heroin.
| jcims wrote:
| I was a hobby beekeeper for a few years and grew to enjoy
| getting stung. It still hurts like hell at first but the
| ride down is lovely.
|
| Spicy foods might be another example.
| codr7 wrote:
| There's also the not so constructive tendency to punish the
| body for what the brain comes up with and the feelings that
| come with it. It's really the only part of yourself you can
| harm.
| consp wrote:
| > Or rather, the relief after the suffering has ended
|
| Good luck if you are suffering from most forms of depression
| in getting that relief since everything is suffering.
| papa0101 wrote:
| The obligatory "To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering
| one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving.
| Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer;
| to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be
| happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy.
| Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or
| suffer from too much happiness."
| idontwantthis wrote:
| It's also a major accomplishment which can boost your mood
| and confidence regardless of it's direct emotional effect.
| hinkley wrote:
| When I learned about the hedonic treadmill I thought back to
| a number of athletic programmers I've known who always seemed
| to be a lot more put together than the rest of us. I always
| figured the relationship went the other way. That having your
| shit together meant more time for activities. It may be the
| other way around.
| codr7 wrote:
| Physical activity is a life saver for me, it allows me to
| release energy that would otherwise cause trouble down the
| line.
| hinkley wrote:
| If you can handle running 5 miles, you can handle that
| terrible refactoring task you discovered this morning.
| simmerup wrote:
| I cured my sugar addiction with a 2 day fast. I found it
| remarkable tbh
| fredgrott wrote:
| fasting changes the population of the microbiome in your gi
| tract...
| francisofascii wrote:
| Yes. A long fast can reduce overgrowth of harmful bacteria that
| survives on a continuous supply of food. This paper mentions
| Morganella morganii, which is an example of harmful bacteria
| that thrives in a environment full of undigested proteins and
| carbohydrates.
| aszantu wrote:
| been collecting for a while, happy hunting
| https://github.com/cutestuff/FoodDepressionConundrum
| ldoughty wrote:
| I certainly agree there's a connection from the gut to the
| rest of our body (including mood) that we still don't
| understand... But I'm curious if you've done anything to rule
| out psychosomatic ? I saw a brief mention that you think
| there is a link to childhood experiences, which means you do
| agree there might be a mental connection... Have you tried a
| blind experiment at all? I could see it being relatively
| possible if you had someone prepare something liquid, steps
| were taken to conceal the flavor, and perhaps using a straw
| to limit how much you can notice.
| genter wrote:
| I completely cured my severe anxiety and minor depression by
| eliminating wheat and sugar from my diet. I come from a family
| where everyone has digestive issues and some type of illness
| that is tentatively linked to the microbiome.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| For how long, is the question though? Depression and anxiety
| are like the "common cold" of mental health suffering, and
| everyone endures it a few times in their life.
| genter wrote:
| Well, it's been about 10 years. And I'm still a completely
| different person with absolutely no signs of it.
| settsu wrote:
| Yeah, no. Please further educate yourself before saying
| this out loud again.
| trevor-e wrote:
| This has me very curious! How did you decide on eliminating
| wheat and sugar? Or did you cycle through various
| eliminations until you found a combination that worked? And
| how did you know when to keep going/stop?
| dfsegoat wrote:
| Did you already exercise regularly?
| rapfaria wrote:
| Would also want to know this, since one probably needs a lot
| of muscle to go through this 14 day period, but those muscles
| would come from exercising, which also help reducing
| depression.
| alecst wrote:
| Yea, I'm in good shape. I commute by bike and was spending
| most of my free time at the gym.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| > _It's hard to say why it worked_
|
| Behaviour therapy would say that it worked because you took
| some action to improve your life and counter the depression.
| (Even cognitive therapy says that small, meaningful actions can
| have a dramatic impact on one's depression). The motivation and
| action of fasting, and the positive and noticeable / observable
| physical effects of fasting changed your focus from your
| depression, which alleviated your depressive symptoms. Once
| depression alleviates, you start thinking more clearly (make
| less cognitive distortions in your thinking) which further
| leads to a 'normal' mental state of well-being (in an otherwise
| mentally healthy individual).
| skirge wrote:
| strange, I guess bacteria wasn't happy at all during you
| fasting
| jb_briant wrote:
| I wonder if people who are questioning if fasting 2 weeks is
| the main cause of interrupting your depression did ever fasted
| a week. Would you consider that you "cured" the depression?
| alecst wrote:
| Yea. Many of the comments hurt me to read. I'm trying to
| remind myself that they come from a place of curiosity and
| wanting to rule out confounding variables. But they do make a
| lot of assumptions about me and things I know and/or do.
|
| To answer your question: I hesitate to use the word "cure",
| because 3-4 months on, I'm starting to wonder if certain
| things have begun to slide back, or if it's just been a
| challenging week. Time will tell.
|
| A datapoint that I did not mention in my first post was that
| there was a negative, persistent, digestive side-effect that
| paralleled the positive mental changes. As that has faded, so
| have some of the noticeable mental changes. I'm still doing
| better, but maybe with less energy than a month or so after
| the fast. I hope not, but maybe this is something I'll have
| to repeat every now and then.
| e40 wrote:
| I wonder if shorter fasts between the long ones would make
| a difference?
|
| Ignore the hurtful comments. A good portion of people don't
| have much empathy for others, combined with the anonymous
| nature of this forum, makes people say hurtful things.
|
| Good luck on your journey.
| alecst wrote:
| Thanks, I appreciate that. And by the way, I had the same
| thought as you. I've been doing monthly 5-day fasts just
| to see what would happen. So far not much to report, but
| I'll wait until 6 months have passed to draw conclusions.
| crdrost wrote:
| At the most extreme end of the other side, Buddhist
| monks, in addition to not eating meat (or, often, aliums
| like onions and garlic), also don't generally believe in
| dinner--they have to eat all their solid food for the day
| before noon, so you could view this as fasting for half
| the day every day.
|
| (There are some caveats... At least for the Tibetan monks
| I knew, morning prayer is early at like 5am and comes
| with a sort of pita bread and tea, bedtime is closer to
| 9pm, and during these 9 hours there will be more tea.
| With a little googling I am able to confirm that some of
| the "pita" (pao balep) is consumed at the lunch tea, and
| I think this is after the lunch meal, so it might be 1pm.
| I think there's none at the evening tea that you'd have
| around sundown? Also in terms of calories the Tibetan tea
| is "bulletproof," consisting of a very long steep for the
| leaves to extract maximum bitter flavors, that get mixed
| with a bunch of yak butter and salt. So liquid calories
| are very much a thing for them.)
| stewarts wrote:
| Have you done any experimentation with pre/pro-biotics?
| Just wondering if your fasting adjusted your gut biome, but
| now as you've resumed whatever diet that biome is being
| modified based on the fuels available to it.
| mtgentry wrote:
| Yeah might be worth regularly eating foods like kimchee
| or kefir. Or high quality yogurt. It seems to help with
| my psoriasis which is related to inflammation.
| codr7 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure vegetable sources are way more potent
| than yoghurt, fermenting your own veggies is not that
| complicated. Nor is making your own yoghurt. The thing
| is, it's alive, so shelf time matters a lot.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| If your depression remained abated after resuming a healthy
| diet, I'd say the microbiome hypothesis is intriguing.
| Otherwise I'd there are way too many complicating factors at
| work during a fast to dwell on that.
|
| Also, you could toy around with different fermented foods while
| making no other changes.
| e40 wrote:
| I assume it was a water fast. Did you supplement with anything?
| Did you have a doctor's supervision during the 2 weeks? How did
| you reintroduce food? I've always been fascinated by long
| fasts, but I'm scared to try them.
| martinsnow wrote:
| Not eating for a couple of weeks won't kill healthy people.
| You don't have to waste your doctor's time unless you're old
| or frail.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Asking for medical advice is a waste of your doctor's time?
| I'd rather do that than trust a bunch of random posts from
| people I don't know on a technology website.
| krageon wrote:
| They could be helping someone who actually needs it.
| Asking for time you don't need is unethical.
| alecst wrote:
| I had some electrolytes at first but ditched them on the
| third day. After that it was just plain water. If I had to do
| it again, I would take potassium and table salt throughout.
|
| I did have friends and my girlfriend with me for a lot of it.
|
| I didn't do anything special to break the fast.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Good for you! This is how it all starts. By adding foods back
| slowly you may start to find what foods are a trigger for gut
| inflammation and depression.
|
| There is one medical diet, called the FODMAP diet you might
| want to look into. It helps you find what foods might be
| causing some bacterial in your gut to become imbalanced.
|
| I am not at all saying it is all you microbiome, foods may
| affect us in so many more way than only in the gut. It may be
| that not eating has lowered oxidative stress in your body
| allowing your mitochondria to recover and are now able to
| provide the energy you need.
| hellectronic wrote:
| I commented above, Checkout Brain Energy by Christopher Palmer
| angst_ridden wrote:
| There is also a known phenomenon of "starvation euphoria." I
| don't know at what point of caloric deficit that kicks in, but
| it probably varies dramatically.
| kouru225 wrote:
| Interrupted or fixed? And lemme get that regiment?
| Arrekin wrote:
| Keto is the only thing that fixes my depression-like state. I
| discovered it doing short-term fasts and then learned about Keto.
| I tested it multiple times. Once I get off Keto I feel much worse
| within 2 weeks and after around 1 month I am at the total bottom
| again. Then go back to Keto, 2-3 days of suffering Keto Flu and
| I'm happy to live again.
| dombesz wrote:
| You probably have gut dysbiosis causing inflamation of your gut
| and inflamation leads to depression like symptoms. This doesn't
| mean you have to eat keto all the time, but rather that you
| should take probiotics to restore your gut flora. This way, you
| can continue eating a balanced diet without allowing that
| specific bacteria to become overpopulated. The best for me was
| using Lactobacyllus subtilis HU-58 alongside low-fodmap diet.
| The low fodmap diet is a shorter period of 1 month, then it
| needs to continue with the RENEW diet for 3-6months to 1 year.
| This whole period needs to be supplimented with hu58.
| Arrekin wrote:
| Thank you I'll check that out. Tho, for me, it most likely
| began as a post-flu complication, so I don't have much hopes.
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| I had some gut bacteria issues and I think I was helped
| recently by using oregano oil and/or allicine (extract from
| garlic). Used both for a week, before had 2x antibiotics for
| suspected SIBO. I also used VivoMaxx 450 probiotics and
| sodium butyrate for 3 days so maybe it was it. All of these
| combined are cheaper than single curation with antibiotics so
| worth giving a shot in case of issues.
| baxtr wrote:
| Thanks. Very interesting.
|
| Do you know why HU 58 is so special?
| hellectronic wrote:
| Checkout the book Brain Energy by Christopher Palmer
| maxfurman wrote:
| So if, for the sake of argument, the findings here are correct
| and causal and should be acted upon, what exactly is one supposed
| to do about it? We've got the technology to detect gut bacteria
| but we don't seem to have good targeted ways to affect it.
| revx wrote:
| Cut things that contain diethanolamine from your
| home/diet/life?
| troyvit wrote:
| An interesting way to affect gut bacteria is to get a fecal
| transplant. It doesn't look fun, and I don't know how well it
| works, but I bet that's the direction to go.
|
| https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-t...
| calibas wrote:
| > We've got the technology to detect gut bacteria but we don't
| seem to have good targeted ways to affect it.
|
| Healthy diet, fasting, probiotics, reducing stress, among other
| methods.
| kvgr wrote:
| This explains why my moods gets better for couple of weeks, hwne
| i take some antibiotics.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Causation != correlation. Not all bad moods are caused by
| bacteria and you're not factoring in the fact you were sick and
| got well as a potential mood boosting factor
| hollerith wrote:
| I'm inclined to believe that GP is rational enough to be able
| to notice if there were symptoms other than low mood _that
| were so severe and troublesome_ that GP reacted with
| chronically-low mood.
|
| And I'm inclined to believe that GP is competent enough at
| writing comments that if there were such non-mood symptoms,
| GP would've mentioned them.
|
| (I don't know anything personally about GP: I'm going on the
| average rationality level of the writers of HN comments that
| report on the writer's own health.)
| Jun8 wrote:
| This is probably a wild (~stupid) idea but can we develop drugs
| to elite particular bacteria, e.g. just kill Morganella morganii,
| akin to Ehrlich's magic bullet? Current approaches, I think, use
| antibiotics that kill a wide range of bacteria, the good with the
| bad.
|
| How would such a thing work? Could there be enzymes specific to
| one species (or, at least, a family)?
| jagraff wrote:
| I don't know about enzymes, but bacteriophages (viruses that
| target bacteria) are species specific, and have been used
| successfully as antibacterial treatments:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Are there studies linking common antibiotics to depression?
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| Find a vegan / natural soap store in your city. Off the Botel in
| Denver is great,
|
| https://offthebottlerefills.com/
|
| Ive switched entirely to Bathing Culture myself, an all natural
| soap brand.
|
| https://bathingculture.com/
| hinkley wrote:
| Alternatively, biodegradable soaps deemed safe for camping may
| be another good choice.
|
| See also Dr Bronner's, Method, Pre de Provence bar soap.
| talkingtab wrote:
| This is a "you don't know what you don't know" thing. This
| article lays out a path way for a link between a chemical that is
| common in our lives and depression. That pathway is a common gut
| bacteria. The article ends with this:
|
| "So taken together, there would seem to be good reason to
| continue to unravel the long-hypothesized inflammation/depression
| connection, and particularly in regards to possible exacerbating
| factors such as higher levels of M. morganii infection or even
| higher environmental exposure to diethanolamine. We seem to have
| a lot to learn here!"
|
| diethanolamine is commonly used in liquid laundry and dish
| washing detergents, cosmetics, shampoos and hair conditioners. So
| you really don't know if your hair conditioner, shampoo or dish
| washing detergent is causing you inflammation & depression. Hmmm.
|
| We, as in the institutions that supposedly protect consumers,
| work on the assumption that anything can be used and added until
| it is proven not safe. For example, thalidomide. We did not know
| it would cause deformed babies, so it was assumed to be safe.
|
| Okay, so will some corporation knowingly use something that is
| hazardous, just to make more money. Well we have the Sackler
| Family and Purdue Pharma. Or you can go watch "Erin Brokovitch".
| And you might want to watch Matix again just for fun.
| Theizestooke wrote:
| That's interesting. I always get a bout of depression when the
| weather changes drastically (increase in temp, drop in pressure).
| I noticed that when I'm able to poop again, afterwards it starts
| to get better. Maybe I need to take stuff to speed up digestion?
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