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A lack of fibre is making you sick - the microbiome and health

bit_pattern

bit_pattern

Ex-Bluelighter
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Oct 17, 2008
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Has anyone else been hearing about the developments in microbial ecology and the impact on health? There is a growing body of evidence a huge amount of ailments are linked to imbalances in your gut-bacteria - from asthma, to inflammatory disease, even autism.

And there's a really simple solution to it all - dramatically increase the amount of fibre in your diet.

Researchers are heralding the discovery of the bacteria-health nexus as one of the single greatest ever breakthroughs in health science. It really is that big

I've just been watching these two episodes of Catalyst (a science programme in Australia) and they've completely changed my views on diet and health. The last week I've been eating nothing but fruit, vegetables, pulses anything else that is high in fibre. Already my poo is so much healthier and easier to pass (less messy too) and, if the evidence presented here is anything to go by, it should be radically altering the ecology in my digestive system for the better.

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/4067184.htm

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/4070977.htm

Check it out - and there's some more links below to some microbial ecology websites, there's even one where you can submit poo samples and get your microbiome analysed to tell you what diseases you're at risk of:

http://humanfoodproject.com/

http://americangut.org/

http://www.hmpdacc.org/

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7268/abs/nature08530.html

http://www.med.monash.edu.au/cecs/gastro/prebiotic/
 
bit_pattern said:
The last week I've been eating nothing but fruit, vegetables, pulses anything else that is high in fibre.
Click to expand...

Fiber is very beneficial indeed but if you're really concerned with your health you should eat more than just fruits and veggies.
 
Yes fiber is beneficial for a healthy body no doubt but i do agree with flyhighk, you gotta have a well-balanced diet if you are someone like me who works out like crazy you would need more than fruits and vegetables. I am not a big fan of meat but fish in an exception.
 
Yes, well, the point of the thread wasn't to tell people to eat nothing but fruit and vegetables - rather to inform about the exciting new revolution in thinking about human health and microbial ecology. If anyone actually reads/watches the links provided they'll quickly see that the idea isn't to eat nothing but fruit and vegetables but rather to better understand the relationship between bacteria, inflammation and the raft of diseases they influence. Eating a high fibre is probably the best thing anyone can do for their long term health - not that doing so negates the need to eat proteins and fats, simply that it necessitates doubling or tripling one's intake of fibre. That and the fascinating link between acetate (i.e. vinegar) and inflammation - there's some really interesting research going on in this field.

For people who haven't watched/read the main link - some of the really exciting stuff relates to faeces. Researchers are getting some good results on bowel inflammation by transplanting faeces from ahealthy person to a sick person, the gut bacteria re-colonise the inflamed tissue and diseases go away. This could be a radical new treatment for all kinds of diseases - MS, asthma, even emphysema.

I would encourage everyone not to focus on my own decision to (temporarily) eat nothing but fruit and vegetables (and pulses, which can actually provide the protein you guys think a non-meat/fish diet has to provide, but that's another story) while I recalibrate my gut bacteria ecology and actually watch/read the links provided. It really is a revelation.
 
Cool. Thanks. I've found myself poring over fermentation recipes for the past hour now!
 
Yeah, most definitely (backed up) - you should be aiming to eat at least 50g of fibre a day.
 
50g is a bit much, the RDI is 35-40g for men (10g less for women). Water is also hugely important, for my part I get ~40g fibre daily and need 3L of fluids to keep it moving through me properly, closer to 4L if it's a cardio day. Every night I put out 4 500mL bottles so I know I'm getting at least 2L and then the remaining 1-2L I get drinking teas. I save a lot of time in managing my diet by focusing on fibre "superfoods" like avocado, wheat bran, oatmeal, apples. Those are foods you can eat regularly and they also provide good doses of protein, salts, fats too. Dairy is the other half of the battle, stuff like kefir and yogurt in particular provide good doses of lactobacillus and bifidobacterium (the healthy bacteria) to populate your gut with and they have been linked to happiness.

I forgot almonds, also a fibre superfood but they're been getting more expensive lately so don't buy them please :p
 
^^ The RDI doesn't take into account the new developments in understanding of gut-bacteria and health. The videos refer to hunter gatherer societies eating between 50-200g of fibre a day and, as a result, having 2-3 times the number of species of bacteria. I guess the main thrust of this thread is the role that fibre plays in building and maintaining a healthy diversity in your internal microbiome. Between the advent of antibiotics and the general decline in the quality of food we eat we've gone through a sharp decline in diversity, this decline is now increasingly being linked to inflammation-based disease. My goal in increasing my fibre intake isn't just to feed myself but to enhance the symbiotic relationship between myself and my microbiome.

Watch the videos. They're really interesting.
 
From the transcript:

NARRATION
How much fibre should we naturally eat? Oh, to time travel back to the Stone Age and actually see what our ancestors ate. Well, Africa's Hadza people kind of provide a glimpse of that.

Dr Jeff Leach
Every astrophysicist dreams of, you know, watching a star being born or a galaxy being born. And for us, we can watch how the Hadza interact with their environment.

NARRATION
Jeff Leach lives with and studies the Stone-Age Hadza people. They're some of the last people in the world still getting 95% of their food from hunting and gathering.

Dr Jeff Leach
They literally still hunt the same animals that our ancestors have hunted and scavenged for millions of years. They drink literally the same water. They gather the same plants. They're covered in the same soil.

NARRATION
If there's a natural human diet, it's something like this.

Dr Jeff Leach
You know, the men get up every morning, they go hunting and gathering. They collect honey, they hunt animals with poisoned arrows. The women dig tubers, collect berries.

NARRATION
The Hadza eat a remarkable variety of food.

Dr Jeff Leach
But the one thing that is striking about the diet is the extraordinary quantity of dietary fibre that the Hadza eat. We know that these Hadza kids and adults are eating literally five, ten times more fibre than us in the West which means they're feeding their bacteria on a regular basis.

NARRATION
And it's not just diet and the early years of life that are changing our gut bacteria. So are antibiotics.

Professor Charles Mackay
We suspect that antibiotics are gonna be very similar to diet.

NARRATION
They're a bit like dropping a nuclear bomb on your gut bacteria. Particularly vulnerable to antibiotics are young children.

Professor Stephen Simpson
The relationship between microbial ecology of the gut and the priming and training of the immune system is such a critical thing in the development of a child that if you mess with that too badly, then that may be responsible for problems.

NARRATION
By late infancy, the bacteria in our guts begin to stabilise.

Professor Sarkis K Mazmanian
The best evidence that we have so far is that by the age of three the gut microbes of people look adult-like. And so I think that there is this critical window very early in life when gut microbes could affect the immune system or the metabolic and the nervous system.

NARRATION
All together, our low-fibre diets, antibiotics and Western ways have left us with very low diversity in our gut bacteria.

Dr Jeff Leach
The most diversity we've ever seen is with the Hadza. So you take a... let's take a healthy adult in Australia. They might have 1,000 to 1,500 species of bacteria, dependent on how you define species. You know, a similar-aged Hadza might have two to three times that much.

NARRATION
So all the health problems on that long list may be connected to a lack of diversity and to the wrong type of bacteria disturbing the immune system, leaving our bodies in a perpetual state of inflammation. Inflammation is one of the body's defence mechanisms and involves immune cells being released. But these defences can do harm if they're not properly controlled.

Professor Charles Mackay
The cells which are built to kill bacteria are actually doing damage to our own tissue. And that's usually an inflammatory disease. And that's what happens in the islets in type-1 diabetes or in the airways in asthma or in the joints in rheumatoid arthritis.
 
saw the ads to these catalyst episodes and intended to catch them, but got distracted. thanks for the reminder.
 
My pleasure L2R - also try and track down Life on Us. Was on SBS s few months ago & was my first insight into this development.

Its a revolution in our understanding of health - the more people who turn on to it the better. We need to apply ecological system thinking to every aspect of our lives.
 
bit_pattern said:
Researchers are heralding the discovery of the bacteria-health nexus as one of the single greatest ever breakthroughs in health science. It really is that big
Click to expand...

I find this amusing. People knew all this already simply from observing diet down through the generations, it's only in the last century or so we've latched on to industrial food that has been stripped of nutrients and beneficial bacteria, and forgotten the old knowledge. Industrial food tends to be over processed and neutralized/pasteurized/irradiated. You're only as strong as the weakest link, and your gut is the first place in your body for generation of energy.. weak gut = weak body and mind.

Not knocking your find or your change of diet, all the power to you! People need to be made aware of this kind of information, information that used to be common knowledge but has since been lost. I'm currently making my first batch of fermented sauerkraut :D

Quality over quantity. This needs to become paramount in the food/agriculture industry again, as opposed to mass production that has dominated the last century. Starting with the basics.. soil quality.

We need to apply ecological system thinking to every aspect of our lives.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. Treating the gut an isolated mechanical system where we deal with only calories, fat, and sugars was a huge mistake. The gut is basically a second brain in the body and an ecosystem in its own right.


The sharp rise in digestive disorders, bowel issues, allergies, cancers etc over the past century I believe is strongly correlated with our crap diets.
 
Hey SS - I'm posting from my phone ATM so can't engage to the degree I'd like but it's good to connect on common ground. I'll get back to you soon :)
 
-=SS=- said:
I find this amusing. People knew all this already simply from observing diet down through the generations, it's only in the last century or so we've latched on to industrial food that has been stripped of nutrients and beneficial bacteria, and forgotten the old knowledge. Industrial food tends to be over processed and neutralized/pasteurized/irradiated. You're only as strong as the weakest link, and your gut is the first place in your body for generation of energy.. weak gut = weak body and mind.
Click to expand...

Yeah, mos' def'. It's the ecological perspective I find the most exciting (I'm an enviro student. what can I say?). Over the years I've come to a kind of rigidly sceptial POV towards things, if there's not evidence I reject it quite vehemently. What I've found the most interesting about this stuff is how some of thee ideological perspectives proffered by "alternative" health types might actually be supported by the empirical evidence. That's kind of cool because it's challenged my worldview in some respects.

Not knocking your find or your change of diet, all the power to you! People need to be made aware of this kind of information, information that used to be common knowledge but has since been lost. I'm currently making my first batch of fermented sauerkraut :D
Click to expand...

Yeah. I'm going to do some fermented stuff real soon. Was looking at pre-produced sauerkraut the other day but decided its probably better to make sure it's properly fermented. The kin chi look pretty delicious too.

Quality over quantity. This needs to become paramount in the food/agriculture industry again, as opposed to mass production that has dominated the last century. Starting with the basics.. soil quality.
Click to expand...

Yup. Soil is a massive problem here in Aus. We grow things like we're in Europe when we have very old and degradable soil. We don't even bother with soil with our biggest cash crops any more because we fucked it so badly. Now we just use fertilisers and its ging to be a massive problem real soon.

Absolutely. Treating the gut an isolated mechanical system where we deal with only calories, fat, and sugars was a huge mistake. The gut is basically a second brain in the body and an ecosystem in its own right.


The sharp rise in digestive disorders, bowel issues, allergies, cancers etc over the past century I believe is strongly correlated with our crap diets.
Click to expand...

Indeed. But can be overcome if we apply ecological systems thinking. This field is so exciting to me.
 
-=SS=- said:
Hey.. we both feel passionately about things, we're bound to agree and disagree on stuff :)
Click to expand...
So very true!
It's a shame more people aren't hip to this simple bit of wisdom.

Great thread, b_p; I don't have a telly so I always miss such quality abc programs - I'll have a look at the links when I get a chance. Cheers :)
 
bit_pattern said:
^^ The RDI doesn't take into account the new developments in understanding of gut-bacteria and health. The videos refer to hunter gatherer societies eating between 50-200g of fibre a day and, as a result, having 2-3 times the number of species of bacteria. I guess the main thrust of this thread is the role that fibre plays in building and maintaining a healthy diversity in your internal microbiome. Between the advent of antibiotics and the general decline in the quality of food we eat we've gone through a sharp decline in diversity, this decline is now increasingly being linked to inflammation-based disease. My goal in increasing my fibre intake isn't just to feed myself but to enhance the symbiotic relationship between myself and my microbiome.

Watch the videos. They're really interesting.
Click to expand...

I just don't see how 200g of fibre daily is even possible. I can reach 50g at most if i snack between meals and supplement but it's difficult to get more than 40g while keeping up with other stuff like protein and fats. the thing is that all fibrous foods also contain lots of carbs and sugar and in modern urban society most of the population gets nowhere near the amount of exercise that hunter-gatherer types would have been getting daily. For them, getting veggies would mean pulling roots from the ground and meat would mean stalking prey for hours a day. For us, getting meat and veggies is simply a matter of sitting in the car and driving to the grocery store where it's all conveniently been collected for purchase. So even if we were able to take in 200g of fibre a day, the question is how much physical activity would we have to add to burn through the energy surplus that comes with it.
 
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