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:
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.
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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]
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]
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.
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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.
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.
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