Re: probiotics FOS

[Guest guest]

At 10:24 AM 2/13/2005, you wrote:

>

:

>I forgot one important point, which is that our current taxonomy of carbs

>is somewhat lacking.

>

>First, there's " fiber " which is metabolically available to gut microbes,

>and also " fiber " which isn't, but the distinction is important. Second,

>there's " fiber " which is metabolically available to gut microbes in some

>people but not in others (such as cellulose nowadays), and that distinction

>is also important.

And shoot, there is even more interesting research in the offing. Like the lower

gut FEEDS the microbes sugar! Even if you don't eat it! Gimme that fuctose!

http://mednewsarchive.wustl.edu/medadmin/PAnews.nsf/0/A630125F2AE167EC86256B1E00\

792CBF

St. Louis, Aug. 20, 1999 – Please pass the sugar, a hungry bacterium says. And

the lining of the intestine complies. But how can microbes talk to mammals? With

a dual-purpose protein, scientists find.

Heidi Jean

[Guest guest]

At 10:04 AM 2/13/2005, you wrote:

>Heidi-

>

>>You can and should distinguish, esp. as to the digestive time, so if it

>>will be clearer I'll call them all " saccharides " .

>

>Why not just call them collectively " carbs " ? That's the standard term.

>

>That said, in most of this discussion it's important to distinguish between

>types of carbs.

>

>>The original post I was responding to was about onions ... I suspect I

>>don't even know the name of the roots tribal folks ate, but foods like

>>wild onions and Jerusalem artichokes and other tubers are generally

>>mentioned.

>

>Wild onions contain less inulin (and indeed, like all wild, ancestor

>species, less stored energy period) than modern onions. Also, onions,

>though they contain inulin, are not " high inulin " by any stretch of the

>imagination -- not compared to Jerusalem artichokes, for example, let alone

>compared to a diet with supplemental inulin in the form of a manufactured

>isolate.

Umm ... based on what? Roots store energy, and wild roots store energy too.

Modern onions may be bigger, I don't know, but roots have been a mainstay

forever. I don't know their inulin content vs. say, fast digesting carbs, but

most roots seem to have both. The commonality is that folks eating roots in

general were all healthier than " civilized " folks. Egyptians don't count: they

were civilized by any standard, eating tons of grain, and had the first " grain

related " diseases. Which proves, I guess, that onions don't counteract wheat.

>

>>I agree with the grains, which are decidedly new.

>

>OK, this is progress, though IIRC you consume grains and recommend them,

>no? (Gluten-free grains, of course.)

I don't think grains are great things, though most of Asia does better than most

of America, by eating rice rather than wheat (but they also have been

" civilized " longer than most Americans, in terms of grain eating). I do eat

them, because they are part of my culture and I like them, and rice doesn't seem

to be a problem. Potatoes are better though.

>>Roots aren't new

>>though, to any culture except maybe a few like the Inuit. Even wild hogs

>>dig roots.

>

>What do wild hogs have to do with anything?

Many of the folks who say " starches are new " use the argument that " wild humans "

couldn't get any quantity of starches ... which is just untrue. There are plenty

of starches " in the wild " and the starches are easier to catch than meat is.

Lots of carbs in fruits too, and tropical fruits (which we are likely more

adapted to than the Northern varieties anyway) are loaded with sugar. So the

argument that " humans aren't adapted to carbs " just doesn't hold water. I agree

that some folks don't handle carbs well, for a number of reasons.

>And while I agree that roots aren't new -- and thus recommend roots over

>grains for people who can metabolize starch in quantity well -- modern

>roots are nonetheless almost as different from their wild ancestors as

>modern grains are from theirs. Since the advent of agriculture, roots and

>tubers have been bred for dramatically increased size and starch

>content. This has also had the almost-inevitable side effect of

>significantly reducing their nutrition-per-calorie levels.

Based on what? Potatoes? What about cassava roots or agave or sweet potatoes?

Most of the analyses I've seen about that are Northern vegies ... in the

tropics, where humans first were, there are lots of sugary starchy plants. Some

of them have been bred to be bigger, but many of them have been used for food

for a long time, and Price's " healthy natives " ate a fair number of starches.

I do agree we eat more starches now, and in the wrong form. The ones we eat now

digest more quickly, which sends the blood sugar soaring. But that's a different

issue from the original premise, that *slow* digesting carbs feed the bacteria

in the wrong way.

>>The indians around here used rather large quantities of

>>arrowroot, which was easily harvested from bogs.

>

>Many native American tribes were anything but the paragons of health that

>Price sought out, and from my understanding, the carbier the tribes' diets,

>the more agricultural their lifestyle, the less healthy they were.

I agree about agriculture, esp. the kind where you plant crops (the arrowroot

gatherers didn't plant crops). But the issue, again, is " are human digestive

tracts designed to digest starch " . By all accounts I've read, MOST human

societies involved humans digesting a fair amount of starch. And sugar.

>Furthermore, as I've mentioned before, the healthiest native American

>tribes were those which ate the most animal foods and relied on carbs and

>agriculture (and proto-agriculture) the least. This is very

>important. You can't just say " well, [some] Indians did/ate this, so it's

>gotta be great! " .

And I don't think he does. He says they ate more fat than we do, and that their

carbs were in a different form. And he is just one researcher ... no researcher

I've read supports the notion that ancient humans ate a " very low carb " diet in

general. There are some exceptions, like the Inuit or the Masai, and most humans

(according to Cordain too) ate fewer carbs than the average American, and they

ate slower digesting carbs. But to say humans aren't adapted to starch and carbs

.... where is the evidence?

>These numbers are again somewhat distorted by Cordain's opposition to

>saturated fat and support of unsaturated fat. He bases them in part on

>incorrect assumptions about which parts of animals native peoples would

>have preferred to eat -- in his view, lean cuts and parts with more

>monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat relative to saturated fat would

>have been chosen over fatty parts, and as we know, he's dead wrong on that.

Actually, if you read the article, he doesn't say that. He says they would eat

the whole animal, most likely. Based on the elk that I've seen hunters bring in,

Cordain's numbers seem about right. Some animals, like buffalo, have more fat,

which would be prized. But none of that has to do with his numbers for vegie

stuff, which is also borne out by fecal research. Early humans ate a lot of meat

.... but they also ate roots, fruit, and plants, which were full of carbs.

>Again, so what if there are wild animals that subsist on them? There are

>bacteria which subsist entirely on fruit. What happened to the idea of a

>species-appropriate diet? I'm not arguing that starch is some sort of

>universal metabolic poison, toxic to all life on Earth. I mean, duh!

Because, if a chimp can get carbs, so can a human. What records remain record

stuff about squaws digging roots to feed the family. A lot. Starches were eaten.

A lot. Meat was desirable, but not always available, even to folks with guns

like and . Humans can digest both, just fine.

> People have certain digestive resources -- certain enzyme production

>capacities, certain rates at which digested nutrients can be absorbed

>through the intestinal walls, etc. These resources vary from person to

>person, to some degree genetically, to some degree due to formative

>environment, and to some degree due to state of health.

You see, I agree with this totally. Most of the folks in our culture who have

serious problems with microbes, don't digest starches well. Because, they either

have:

1. Low stomach acid

2. Shortened or nonexistent villi

3. Lack of enzymes

All of which are symptoms of other disorders, and all of which are to some

degree curable. But it's not the normal state of humans.

>In contrast, consider something that humans have some ability to digest,

>and that human gut microbes also have some ability to digest. Microbial

>overgrowth occurs when you eat too much of that substance at once so that

>microbes have the opportunity to digest that part of the substance which

>the human machinery hasn't managed to get to before them. This can occur

>with starches as well as with disaccharides for which people have only

>limited digestive enzyme production capacity. That's why sucrose, for

>example, is SCD-illegal for people with bowel disease.

Except that normally, sucrose and starches are digested and absorbed way before

they get to the lower gut. If they are not, the human has problems, or they are

Inuit. Shoot, even the Inuit probably digest them fast, because they get blood

sugar issues from modern carbs.

It is true that modern humans overeat, and that deserves study. My DH used to

eat an entire large pizza at one meal. Now he eats two slices and is full. Why?

What changed his " signalling " apparatus? A human should NOT be able to eat an

entire pizza: his appestat should rebel.

>The local point is that the modern diet has changed the human gut ecology

>pretty dramatically. The larger point is that historically, healthy people

>adapted to particular slow-digesting starches (and remember all my

>conditions required for people to do well on starches!) would've been OK

>because they wouldn't have had gut microbes which rapidly bloomed on

>slow-digesting starches while their host humans slowly teased the calories

>out of the starch. Nowadays, though, people with what we might call

>unnatural gut ecologies (e.g. those that digest cellulose) find themselves

>in a very different position.

Is this true, or have they just gotten better at asking the questions?

Everything I've read says that humans do need bacteria in their lower gut, that

those bacteria do good things (like providing vitamins K and and that those

bacteria eat " slow carbs " (and even get FED by the gut, sheesh!). Humans have

been eating cellulose for ages, lots of it, it wouldn't surprise me that there

are cellulose digesting bacteria in there along with oxalate digesting bacteria.

>Some people do well on onions, others don't. Same with potatoes. Probably

>the same with arrowroot. Though in all three cases, quantity is a very

>important variable. Jerusalem artichokes, though, I think we'd all be

>better off without.

Based on what, again? Any studies? So far the folks with " slow digesting " carbs

universally do better tha " fast digesting " carbs " in anything I've read (though

I can't say I've read anything about Jerusalem artichokes in particular: I did

grow some and was not impressed by taste etc. I have to admit I eat a lot of

onions though).

>After my mom almost diet from ulcerative colitis, she was told to eat a

>white-flour and rice diet. She was given a recipe for scones, in fact, and

>made many of them. For a little while, she did in fact improve a

>lot. Then after awhile she had a relapse. And this, in fact, is what the

>doctors told her would happen: that people like her were inevitably doomed

>to an ongoing cycle of relapse.

Gee, why does this not surprise me???? White flour causes problems, who woulda

guessed?

FWIW: I had a similar issue with " morning sickness " ... they say to eat crackers

to alleviate it, which I dutifully did, and maybe helped for a bit. The morning

sickness continued past when the baby was born, and in fact until I gave up

crackers altogether. However, no quantity of potatoes will bring it on again.

> The SCD, in contrast, achieves long-term remission for a very high

>percentage of people, and in my experience, the people who have problems

>are those who consume too much of the " legal " carbs -- thus swamping their

>own digestive capacity and opening the door for microbial overgrowth, as I

>described above.

Folks with Crohn's have a set of issues that are very specific to them ... and

that needs more research.. I wouldn't extrapolate from that group to " all

humans " . And SCD does, as I've said before, get folks off " processed food "

which is really, really problematic for LOTS of reasons. (among others: it

contains antibacterial agents which throw off the normal gut flora balance ...

). And SCD provides probiotics, which most folks never get.

>

>You know, I really couldn't care less about " the research community " per

>se. " The research community " has given us all sorts of wonders, like the

>low-fat diet. Everything " the research community " says has to be

>scrutinized very, very carefully.

Sure, and there are lots of different parts of the " research community " . I have

a few relatives who are part of it. But gut ecology has been very extensively

and obsessively researched, and from what you've said, Gottschall makes it too

simplistic. Her diet works for a lot of people, BECAUSE it is simple and easy to

follow, but that doesn't mean it is accurate.

>And again, Gottschall is not advising anyone to ever consume grains.

No, but a lot of folks that drop SCD because it is " too hard " might do fine on

rice. The mechanisms are just very, very different.

-- Heidi Jean

[Guest guest]

Heidi-

>Umm ... based on what? Roots store energy, and wild roots store energy too.

Uhh, what is it you're disputing? That cultivated plant varieties store

more energy than their wild ancestors? This is not a controversial point.

>I don't think grains are great things, though most of Asia does better

>than most of America, by eating rice rather than wheat (but they also have

>been " civilized " longer than most Americans, in terms of grain eating). I

>do eat them, because they are part of my culture and I like them, and rice

>doesn't seem to be a problem. Potatoes are better though.

You seem to be assuming that I'm arguing that there's no such thing as a

gluten allergy or a gluten sensitivity. Obviously, though, I'm not. What

I have said is that individual populations adapted to particular starches,

and those adaptations were both genetic and otherwise, meaning that gut

flora adaptations were an important factor. Is it any surprise that people

who (a) didn't make whatever genetic adaptations necessary for wheat and

who ( don't have the correct gut flora develop dysbiosis and gluten

allergies? No. Many Asians (and they're not the paragons of health

they're generally held up as, as has observed) eat a much more

traditional diet -- i.e. one they're better adapted to -- than we do,

though this is probably changing fairly quickly in some parts of the Asian

world.

And other than the question of adaptations, potatoes are better because

they're more nutritious, being by their very nature a less refined product.

>So the argument that " humans aren't adapted to carbs " just doesn't hold

>water.

Have I ever made that argument?

If you're going to debate phantom people, waste someone else's time.

(Though " humans aren't adapted to carbs " is pretty meaninglessly broad anyway.)

>But that's a different issue from the original premise, that *slow*

>digesting carbs feed the bacteria in the wrong way.

Who's original premise? Again, if you're going to debate phantom people,

please waste someone else's time.

>I agree about agriculture, esp. the kind where you plant crops (the

>arrowroot gatherers didn't plant crops). But the issue, again, is " are

>human digestive tracts designed to digest starch " . By all accounts I've

>read, MOST human societies involved humans digesting a fair amount of

>starch. And sugar.

And most human societies were not in anything even remotely approaching

ideal health. If we're trying to figure out what leads to ideal health,

talking about popular practices is irrelevant and even diversionary.

>And I don't think he does. He says they ate more fat than we do, and that

>their carbs were in a different form. And he is just one researcher ... no

>researcher I've read supports the notion that ancient humans ate a " very

>low carb " diet in general. There are some exceptions, like the Inuit or

>the Masai, and most humans (according to Cordain too) ate fewer carbs than

>the average American, and they ate slower digesting carbs. But to say

>humans aren't adapted to starch and carbs ... where is the evidence?

So I dispute Cordain's fat figures and particularly his breakdown of

saturated-versus-unsaturated, and you turn that into this straw man of " to

say humans aren't adapted to starch and carbs " ...? Are you kidding?

I'm really losing patience with this.

>Actually, if you read the article, he doesn't say that. He says they would

>eat the whole animal, most likely.

Actually, you're right. I misspoke. In most places he's said that people

would prefer lean cuts, and in others he's acknowledged that people ate the

whole animal, but as you can see, I believe in WAPF's review of his work

but maybe somewhere else, he seriously distorts the saturated fat and PUFA

contents of various animals by selectively assaying fat in sections of the

animal which tend to have the most PUFA, such as the legs.

>Because, if a chimp can get carbs, so can a human.

Are you kidding?

> > People have certain digestive resources -- certain enzyme production

> >capacities, certain rates at which digested nutrients can be absorbed

> >through the intestinal walls, etc. These resources vary from person to

> >person, to some degree genetically, to some degree due to formative

> >environment, and to some degree due to state of health.

>

>You see, I agree with this totally. Most of the folks in our culture who

>have serious problems with microbes, don't digest starches well. Because,

>they either have:

>

>1. Low stomach acid

>2. Shortened or nonexistent villi

>3. Lack of enzymes

>

>All of which are symptoms of other disorders, and all of which are to some

>degree curable. But it's not the normal state of humans.

Though there's some truth to what you say, it's fascinating I can say that

2 and 2 make 4, and you can respond that 5 equals 13.

> >In contrast, consider something that humans have some ability to digest,

> >and that human gut microbes also have some ability to digest. Microbial

> >overgrowth occurs when you eat too much of that substance at once so that

> >microbes have the opportunity to digest that part of the substance which

> >the human machinery hasn't managed to get to before them. This can occur

> >with starches as well as with disaccharides for which people have only

> >limited digestive enzyme production capacity. That's why sucrose, for

> >example, is SCD-illegal for people with bowel disease.

>

>Except that normally, sucrose and starches are digested and absorbed way

>before they get to the lower gut.

In what part of my paragraph did you see me refer to " the lower gut " ?

> > The SCD, in contrast, achieves long-term remission for a very high

> >percentage of people, and in my experience, the people who have problems

> >are those who consume too much of the " legal " carbs -- thus swamping their

> >own digestive capacity and opening the door for microbial overgrowth, as I

> >described above.

>

>Folks with Crohn's have a set of issues that are very specific to them ...

>and that needs more research.. I wouldn't extrapolate from that group to

> " all humans " .

What part of my above-quoted paragraph referred specifically to

Crohn's? What part of BTVC restricts the SCD to Crohn's? What part of the

research it's based on is founded on Crohn's? Answer to all three: none.

>Her diet works for a lot of people, BECAUSE it is simple and easy to

>follow, but that doesn't mean it is accurate.

So if I tell people to eat only white foods, it's going to work for a lot

of people because it's simple and easy to follow?

Come on.

But how about this: how do you account for people who do well on the SCD,

then run into trouble when they add GLUTEN-FREE starches to their

diet? (Or are you going to respond with another non sequitur straw man

diversionary aggravation which will just lead me to abandon this

increasingly bizarre discussion?)

-