Here is another transcript from the Microbiome Medicine Summit – a talk by Ann Louise Gittleman, PhD, CNS, Nutritionist called: “Parasites May be the Hidden Cause of Your Health Issues“. Here is what Wikipedia’s entry about her has to say about her PhD degree:

In 2002 she was given a PhD in Holistic Nutrition from Clayton College of Natural Health, an unaccredited and now defunct diploma mill whose notable graduates are surrounded in controversy. In 2010, Clayton College closed due to financial difficulties.

Also note how in her talk, she first tries to scare the audience about an invisible (and non-existing!) problem, then will offer a solution: her cleansing products. Also note that, when asked for possible signs for parasite infection, she will list a long list of health conditions most of us might experience. Also note that she says that most of these parasites cannot be detected by conventional tests. Finally, note that she states to not use probiotics during parasite cleaning, but that her own Colon Cleanse kit contains…. probiotics.

Start of (partial) transcript:

This is a very strange subject for someone like myself. I have always been involved with English and drama and religion and metaphysics.

Many many years ago, I studied with a woman …. who changed my whole career in 5 days. It was Dr Hazel Parcells who taught me that 8 out 10 of all Americans – and this was back in 1974 – were infested with of one or more parasites.

In that little class, she showed all of these creatures that came out of all of these individuals who did parasite cleanses.

So we all went on the program, and sure enough, many of our health problems in those days truly did disappear or certainly dissapated, and we learned how parasites were the most immunosuppresive agent in the human body. And I dare to say today, with the human microbiome, it is still a problem that is not being detected, not being suspected (inaudible) need to be treated.

Dr. Parcells was very ahead or her time. She was able to diagnose individuals using a sample of blood and she was extraordinarily accurate.

It was an 8-day milk diet. (…) It was her belief that the milk acted as bait for the parasites, they came out of their hiding places, because many of them live within the gut wall. Which is why when you do traditional stool samples, you don’t see them.

The milk acted as bait, it took them out of the gut wall, and then she zapped them with a speciality blend of herbs.

Quite frankly, we saw all kinds of things coming out.

Host Raphael Kellman: What does the average person do today? Cause you can’t really test for it, the tests are not very accurate, they miss it most of the time. What should they do next?

ALG: Number 1. There are a lot of foods that really help to debilitate parasites. One of them (…) is the cranberry. These are very tart fruits that are quite rich in organic acids. They break down their protein structure, and then stimulating the release of parasitic wastes. So on a daily basis I would suggest for a 2-3 week stint that you do my CranWater daily.

Number 2: Pumpkin seeds on a daily basis. In that way, you clear up any parasite infection by at least 25%.
Another one is garlic. Another one is cayenne peppers. Parasites cannot take the heat.
They really love instant sugars.

Host: Who should be suspicious that they may have parasites hurting their microbiome and their gut?

ALG: If you have symptoms with your intestines, constant constipation or diarrhea or gas, that is not due to certain sensitivities or any other situation, then I really think that you have to suspect parasites. If you’ve gut unresolved joint or muscle pain (…) if you have difficulty sleeping and are constantly waking up between 1 to 3 I would suspect parasites. If you got frequent infections, if you got cold or yeast infections, or any kind of autoimmune situation, think of the parasites. Anxiety, nervousness, depression –

Q What about cancer?

ALG: Well we gotta be very careful but one of my great parasitologist friends .. told me he had never seen a case of cancer that also wasn’t accompanied by parasites. He always cleared out parasites first and foremost, which then led to the development of the parasite products that I have developed and promoted for the last 25 years.

So I’ll tell you that parasites are a real problem, no matter what disease you’re suffering from or if you wanna look good.

It is so amazing to think of all of the seemingly disconnected symptoms and effects of the lowly parasites that behooves all of us, like Europeans to eat certain foods or take certain herbs or bitters to try to eliminate these things from the digestive tract.

Q What are your favorite herbs to reduce or eliminate worms?

ALG: The favorite herb that we put into our product which is my colon cleansing kit is one that you won’t find in any other. and it’s because of the research I was able to do. That herb is Centaury. It allows the parasites to release all their hookers or sucker agents from your gut.

The nutrients that parasites don’t do well with, would be the zinc and vitamin A. They don’t seem to hold on to the intestinal lining as prolifically in the presence of the vitamin A and the zinc.

Q What’s the connection between these parasites and the microbiome?

If you have a healthy microbiome, these little buggers can’t exist. It’s very simple.
We gotta be eating foods that are very high in fermenting agents.

Q Do you recommend fermented foods to everyone across the board?

ALG: No, I don’t. I very rarely recommend that to individuals who have a lot of GI problems, because it creates so much more gas and discomfort.

I have found that the same conditions that give root to parasites or protozoa are those that actually feed back to pathogenic bacteria. So a course of the treatment that I recommend is the My Colon Cleansing kit which has natural herbs that are also very antibacterial.

I was taught, that when you are clearing out parasites, one should not be taking any kind of probiotics or beneficial bacteria because it would actually feed and strengthening the parasites. (taking probiotics/fermented foods) comes later in the entire protocol.

After that first inititial weakening of the agents that are crowding out the microbiome, and are feeding off of the microbiome, we then add back a healthy probiotic.

A microbiome imbalance and a parasite issue, they always go together.

Q Tell us the symptoms that might point to the possibility that there is a microbiome/parasite issue?

ALG: GERD is a primary symptom. Indigestion. A weakened lower esophageal sphincter muscle. That’s for starters. I would also say that IBS may be connected, Crohn’s disease, constipation, diarrhea. Allergy, majorly connected. Joint and muscle aches and pains in arthritis. Skin conditions, very connected because the skin is a detoxification organ.

Q Do you feel there is any value in stool testing?

Many of these little critters live in the small intestine, not in the large intestine, some of them live in the intestinal wall so you are not seeing them in a stool sample, and then they may not be reproducing at the time you take the stool sample. They are most active the 4 days before and after the full moon. I’ve always seen much better results around that time.

(ALG talking about all the great parasitologists who passed away.)

I’ve always been interested. A search for God is what I call it. I studied many of the religions, but I love all the religions where I feel there is some kind of truth.
Maybe this was a search of truth. I don’t know. Truly I think there’re underlying issues, underlying laws of nature, of God, that we all have to observe because if we don’t we get into trouble.

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Part two of me listening to the podcasts provided by self-proclaimed microbiome experts on the Microbiome Medicine Summit. Today features Donna Gates, who – quite frankly – provided the talk with the most quackery I heard so far. Here is a transcript of some of the things she had to say. Please note that English is not my first language, but I did try my best. You can hear the full MP3 here, but it’s over an hour long.

Donna Gates, MEd, ABAAHP, The Power of Developing a Strong Inner Ecosystem

25 years ago, I began to study microbiologists and their journals. And they were always reporting in their journals and to each other things they were finding, but it wasn’t ever coming down to us.

What I used to say years ago, I said it because it made sense, and now there is science behind it. Like, I would say: “Bacteria talk to each other”. And then the quorum sensing came out. And I used to say; “They’re inside the gut and the gut is connected to the brain”, and sure enough, science started.

Host Raphael Kellman: You felt something about the inner ecosystem that you know existed, something that you focused on for a while, way before scientists confirmed that in fact there is a microbiome and an inner ecosystem.

DG: We should all develop this intuition. Probably everyone has it. Certainly healers have it. Especially today, we’re all so busy, we can’t access that part of ourselves. You have to be quiet.

RK: I get the feeling that the bacteria really love you. And they really give you their insights. And if that’s the case, give us the insights that the microbiome is giving you.

DG: There is research showing that the microbiome are very much influenced by our thoughts and I used to think that too.

Over the years I collected vast amounts of fascinating information. For example, we’re so much alike, we human beings, and the bacteria and the other microbes inside of us, they’re just like us.

Bacteria work together in guilds. They even sacrifice themselves, for the sake of the community.

They’re highly intelligent, in a microbe kind of way.

Leo Galland has brought up a new concept which is pretty brilliant. There are certain bacteria in the gut that are “Alexander organisms”. Alexander the Great was this fantastic leader. 1000s of people followed him into battle and they conquered a huge part of the world.

In the gut, the guilds of these communities, they do need a leader. So certain bacteria have been identified as Alexander organisms. That’s one of the things that scientists are looking at: who are the leaders. Who do all these other microbes follow.

The microbiome also consists of viruses, and then there are bacteriophages that are actually controlling the viruses.

A lot of people are talking lately about archaea, this new species that was thought to be a bacteria, but now got moved into its own species. If you have a lot of archaea, which about 50% of us do, we tend to be constipated all the time. They produce methane gas which causes constipation.

The bacteria produce toxins called endotoxins. And they inflame the gut wall, and things leak in that are not supposed to be there, so we end up with diabetes and insulin resistance, hypertension, cardiovascular disease. Endotoxins are like a gun. What really pulls that gun is our high fat diet.

Bacteria are controlling our genes, too. The bacteria have trillions of their own genes. Those, the bacteria and their genes are expressing our genes. They can be turning on the genes we don’t want to turn on, the ones that cause gut problems, or make us age, or cause cancer.

Finally scientists are focusing on this. For many many years I was that lone voice up there saying why don’t people not wake up and see how critical this is? It’s how we prevent autism so consistently over the last 15 years.

I have the moms feed my fermented coconut kefir to their newborn babies, and they grow up to be completely different. They’re so smart, they’re so happy. Every single one of them are really physically beautiful children. They’re so happy, consistently. They’re delightful to raise. Compare that to an autistic child, that’s a pure nightmare for the parent.

Plant foods are full of oxalates, like little shards of glass. There many oxalates in plant food, especially in spinach and chocolate and soy and beets. We’re eating a lot of those today. If you don’t have Oxalobacter formigenes, these oxalates cause calcifications in our bodies, they cause stones. They’re finding stones now in peoples bones, in their brains, in their lungs during an autopsy. These stones can go anywhere in the body. Lactobacillus plantarum degrades oxalates, and can help to compensate for this.

On adding Lp to fermentation cultures: Lactobacillus plantarum is an Alexander Organism. If you put him – or her – in there, they’re telling everybody how to behave, who can grow, and you end up with a very special food.

Plantarum is naturally growing on the plants.

I don’t use the term sauerkraut. That’s a jar of sauerkraut, it’s dead, it has vinegar and lots of salt. I start using the term fermented vegetables, cultured vegetables.

43.00 (lots of loud banging in background – maybe an exploding jar of sauerkraut?)

Bacteria are so intelligent. One of the things they are designed to do is look for parasites and eggs and larva which are on our food, and they will eat them up. They love them, it’s like caviar to them.

All cultures have fermented food.
But we are spraying our foods with glyphosate.

For me, every diet needs to be gluten-free. Grains are OK, but only in the evening, soaked in water, cooked and drained to remove the oxalates, and eaten with vegetables for balance.

Dr. William Shaw was called in by these prisoners only being fed soy. They were very very sick all the time, esp the ones that had been there a while. They sued the state to get real meat into the prison. He told me he was sure to win the case, because when they X-rayed their stomachs, they had stalactites growing down from the top of their stomach, from the oxalates.

And then the oxalate kids, they are super sensitive. There was this little boy, he literally pulled his eye out, because that’s another symptom, aching joints. This little boy, his left eye ached so badly, that’s a common… that’s when I knew that I was – tended to be sensitive, because when I at them, or too many of them, my *left* eye would ache.

I was just at this conference and there is this app, that I’m going to invite everybody on my mailing list to subscribe to this app, but’s it’s kind of fun. It shows up on your iPhone, or your phone, and you can put it over things. If you put this app, your phone, right over your wine glass, all these special Tesla or energy waves go into it, and change it, completely change it. It’s so different afterwards, it’s delicious. You can do it to your coffee, do it to your water, it’s kind of fascinating. We can change things with energy. We are energetic beings, the water is, the wine is. And also they do it for gluten. So I tested it, there was a difference! There were some little crackers on the table, so I thought, ok I will eat gluten. And I ate them, and nothing happened.

Cell wellbeing test, it tells you if you are low in B12 or not. It’s a very sophisticated scan. You pull out some hairs from the back of your neck, put them on this little scanner. All this information goes to Germany, comes back in 15 min, and then you know what your deficiency is.

Host: What would be the 3 main points you would want to leave the audience with?

DG: It’s so simple.
1. Drop the bad fats and oils. Only eat the ones that are good, like coconut oil and olive oil.
2. Don’t eat so much sugar. Stevia is a wonderful substitute. I introduced it into the US.
3. Eat something fermented. That’s the most important.

Host : Where can people get more information about you?

DG: Thanks for bringing that up. I always forget to mention my products. The most important product we have is our knowledge.

I’m one year away from turning 70. But I have no symptoms of aging. I don’t hurt, my hair’s not grey. We don’t have to age. Why am I holding up?

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Some “pearls of wisdom” quotes from the Microbiome Medicine Summit, a collection of podcasts that’s online this week. Not a lot of science here, but several vague statements and extrapolated findings. And links to websites of self proclaimed experts who are eager to sell you their books and dietary supplements. Hyperlinks here lead to MP3s of the podcasts – I have almost all of them in case someone is interested in hearing one of the others. Here are the ones I listened to:

Deepak Chopra 

There are no things in the universe, There is no such thing as a thing, The universe is a verb, your body is a verb

Your body is not a thing, it’s a process

With every breath that you breathe out, you’re breathing out bits and pieces of your heart and kidney and brain tissue, and technically speaking we’re all intimately shearing our organs with each other right now.

The microbiome is the house you live in.
30% of our microbiomes has disappeared in Western societies

Where is our memory housed?

Every cell in your body is the entire history of evolution in those genes.
The universe is constantly recycling its memories in the activity of our cells.

We are conciousnous ourselves.

Science is very good in creating technology: trains, the internet. Science works, so it must be the truth, right? but that’s a mistake.

Now we have a science which has a vocabulary which is based on taking snapshots of an eternal activity, and then we create a map, through that map we create an technology and we say that this is the truth.

While science can give us great technology, both divine and diabotical…, it does not give us a clue to the origins of consciencousness

Sleep, meditation, movement, mind-body coordination, emotions, and food.
Pay attention to these things, you’ll keep the microbiome happy.

[hr]

Amy Myers, MD Autoimmune diseases

Top three toxins that we are exposed to:
Mercury in fish, vaccines, tooth fillings, environment
Mycotoxins, toxic mold – only 25% of people are sensitive for it
Gluten, with roundup on it, which is related to leaky gut.

Q: Do you test mold in you autoimmune cases?
A: No, because you would find something in 80% of the population

Q: How to reverse the symptoms of autoimmune diseases?
A: The first step: Healing the gut. Dr. Fasano at Harvard: Leaky gut is one of the factors that must be present in order for autoimmunity to happen. When we’re stressed out, eat toxins, are exposed to mold, or we eat gluten or dairy, we create this leaky gut. Large molecules now get in, and the immune system will begin to attack them.

Q is there something other than dietary changes that you take to enhance integrity of microbiome?
A: My program with all my patients: doing stool test, treat for infections such as yeast overgrowth, replacing with good probiotics, repairing with L-glutamin and other.
We see a lot of SIBO Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

Tame the toxins: Water filters for drinking and showering water, air filters. I don’t mean to scare people, but using a HEPA airfilter to prevent

[hr]

Julie Matthews, CNC, connection of microbiome with autism and autoimmunity

Findings about microbiome and autism:
Increases in pathogenic bacteria, Clostridia, Desulfovibrio, Sutterella,
Q :if people have son or daughter iwth autism what should they do
Go to your doctor and have them do a comprehensive stool analysis

Q Is there a particular stool test that you would recommend, a particular company?
A: I like the Genova test, is good, because they do the DNA analysis.

Q it’s difficult to treat Clostridia. How do you treat?
A: I’m not a doctor, so I don’t treat, I’ll leave that to the doctors

Discourages eating spinach, beets, sweet potatoes, beans, nuts, chi seeds, because of their high oxylate levels

Q For autoimmune diseases, is there a good diet you would go to first?
A: Would start with gluten free, soy free, and eliminate eggs, corn. Might then look at grains. Then I might look at low phenol diet or low oxylates.

Q: Do you have some study references?
A: People can go to nourishinghope.com/gistudies
or bioindividualnutrition.com/gistudies
(Note EB: both links don’t work)

[hr]

Leo Galland, MD about allergies

There is an unsung epidemic of allergies that is sweeping the world right now.
In my book I have a protocol that people can use to try to figure out if allergies are responsible for their mysterious symptoms.

Q: Is there another blood test other than the IgE?
LG: I have not found any of these blood tests to be definitive, so I really think that my Powerwash Elimination Protocol for food allergies is the most reliable and most sensitive way to determine if any of your symptoms…
LG there is a urine test for leaky gut

Leaky gut:  There is no labtest that can substitute a careful examination

Parasite detection: there is no perfect type of test.

Q: What kind of treatments would you do for the microbiome to help people with allergies?
LG: I have a program that I use that I called ARC: Avoidance, Reflorestation and Cultivation and I describe that in my book.

Q How do you remove inflammation of the gut?
LG: Herb: berberin has great antiinflammatory effects. An antiinflammatory diet is also important.
If you are eating food like hamburgers and rolls and ketchup and sweets, that creates a leaky gut. Leaky gut due to a lousy diet creates inflammation in the body.

Strawberries are an anti-inflammatory food. Unless of course you’re allergic to them.

Lactobacilli and bifidobacteria might impact on mood

I never use probiotics in a vacuum.

I published paper called The gut microbiota and the brain (Note EB: review paper)
For people who have a lot of gas and bloating, I often like the soil derived organisms like Bacillus.

Three main points.

1. What happens in your gut doesn’t stay in your gut. If affects your whole body.
The microbes in your gut can have a profound effect on your immune function and your brain function…. When you take an antibiotic and it alters the microbes in your gut, it might be affecting you systemically in other ways as well

2. The first step in trying to have a healthy balance of bacteria in your gut is controlling inflammation, often its’ about controlling infl by following an antiinflammatory diet of food items that you are not allergic too. That is a very individual process for each person to work out

3. Probiotics can be very helpful for a number of conditions, and have been a proven benefit in the treatment of allergies. but you need to pay attention to how the probiotic is affecting you as an individual, how your gut is responding to it.

[hr]

Larry Palevsky

We know that genetically modified foods will alter the good bacteria that are in our intestines.

When we give antibiotics, when we eat food that has antibiotics in them, even when we vaccinate, we alter the microbiome in the intestines. That changes the conditions and allows for the overgrowth of unfavorable bacteria, which then leads to a lot of the chronic illnesses that we re seeing, , including obesity, autism, diabetes, asthma, atopic illnes and the like.

Q Are you saying that vaccinations are altering the microbiome and therefore they’re more sucseptible for diseases?
LP: When we use overuse antibiotics we are creating superbugs. We know that.
There is growing evidence that vaccinations also change the serotypes of microorganismss
and by changing the serotypes, we are altering ways that the microbiological organisms relate to each other. And so we are are getting mutations of bacteria and viruses because of vaccinations.

Q But does that mean that we should be very careful about vaccinations, perhaps not offer our children vaccinations ?
LP. We should be also asking the questions about the role that vaccinations maybe play in altering the microbiome unfavorably.

We maybe creating more problems by vaccines regarding the microbiome than we are in using the vaccines

[hr]

David Perlmutter

DP: Any time I get to talk about the microbiome I’m always excited.

RK: This is the greatest gift to holistic medicine. The power of bacteria to make widespread holistic changes just feeds perfectly into the whole model of functional and holistic medicine.
DP: It really does.

DP: We’ve been sort of mislead in our characterization of all bacteria being bad, that these are all agents of death. The truth of the matter, every aspect of our health and physiologic function is dependent on the health of the organisms that live upon us and within us.

DP: The role of the microbiome in the soil and how that relates to viniculture: The widespread use of herbicides like glyphosphate, the active ingredient in Roundup, are having a devastating effect in the ability of individuals to grow these grapes now, and certainly the quality of the grapes that are produced.

The body’s chemistry is influenced obviously by the foods that we eat.  Inflammation is the cornerstone of some of our most dreaded brain diseases: Alzheimers, Parkinsons, MS, autism, but also inflammation marking the cornerstone of obesity, diabetes and even cancers.

We began exploring what are the factors that are increasing gut permeability, and that led us to these beautifully scientific studies that showed fe that changes in the gut bacteria (dysbiosis), gluten etc ….leads to gut permeability.

The notion of a leaky brain is coming to the table as well.

DP: We can reestablish gut health. But we’ve got to recognize first how we’re traumatizing the microbiome, and it’s through some very very common actions that are so widely accepted as being harmless but actually harmful, that are changing our microbiomes for the worst, including: our dramatic overuse of antibiotics, NSAIDs, acid blockers such as PPI, our exposure to toxins like glyphosphate…
RK: it punctures holes in our gut!
DP: ..and it does so through the mechanism of changing the gut bacteria.

Q: Let’s try to reduce everything that you said to one most important piece of advice.
DP: The one most important piece of advice is to keep an open mind and have gratitude in your heart.

[hr]

Martha Herbert

MH: The microbiome is really important for oxygenation, for pH regulation….
Q: How does the gut bacteria play a role in the oxygenation of the body and the brain?
MH: You know, the gut bacteria have such an amazing number of roles in metabolism. And as they get depleted, the ecosystem balance is altered . So I actually can’t answer that … completely.

[hr]
Natasha Campbell-McBride

Our gut flora fulfills a myriad of functions for us, and if someone decide they would sterilize the human gut, we probably wouldn’t survive. We simply cannot live without this mass of microbes inside of us.

[hr]

Raphael Kellman: Gut bacteria: They’re playing our genes like Mozart plays the piano. It’s incredible. Their deep knowledge of our physiology, of our genetics, of what turns genes on and off. It’s just exquisite.

[hr]

Microbiome in hyposalivation, frailty microbiotas in discordant twins, saline lakes in Novosibirsk.

Human oral microbiome

Bacterial composition in whole saliva from patients with severe hyposalivation– a case-control study – Daniel Belstrøm – Oral Diseases

Human respiratory microbiome

Mixed group of Rhizobiales microbes in lung and blood of a patient with fatal pulmonary illness – Shyh-Ching Lo – Int J Clin Exp Pathol

Human gut microbiome

Signatures of early frailty in the gut microbiota – Matt Jackson – Genome Medicine

Unique β-Glucuronidase Locus in Gut Microbiomes of Crohn’s Disease Patients and Unaffected First-Degree Relatives – Karine Gloux – PLOS ONE

Animal models

Enhancement of Microbiota in Healthy Macaques Results in Beneficial Modulation of Mucosal and Systemic Immune Function – Jennifer A. Manuzak – The Journal of Immunology

Natural Pig Plasma Immunoglobulins Have Anti-Bacterial Effects: Potential for Use as Feed Supplement for Treatment of Intestinal Infections in Pigs – Chris J. Hedegaard – PLOS ONE

Plant, root, and soil microbiome

Nice to meet you: genetic, epigenetic and metabolic controls of plant perception of beneficial associative and endophytic diazotrophic bacteria in non-leguminous plants – T. L. G. Carvalho – Plant Molecular Biology

Water and extremophile microbiome

Ecological succession reveals potential signatures of marine–terrestrial transition in salt marsh fungal communities – Francisco Dini-Andreote – The ISME Journal

(updated link) The role of environmental factors for the composition of microbial communities of saline lakes in the Novosibirsk region (Russia) – Alla V. Bryanskaya – BMC Microbiology 

Phages and microbial ecology

Bacteriophages affect evolution of bacterial communities in spatially distributed habitats: a simulation study – Alexandra Igorevna Klimenko – BMC Microbiology

Microbes in the news

UK Armed forces hospital’s water supply ‘contaminated with bacteria’ – Damien Gayle – The Guardian

Umpqua Hot Springs re-opens, after water tests clear of bacteria – Jamie Hale – Oregon Live

Far-Out Photos Reveal The Beautiful Bacteria Living In Our Teeth – Jacqueline Howard – Huffington Post Science

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