Everyone's "poo-pooing" the article because the title doesn't mention mice, but, FWIW, stories of gut biota affecting humans behavior have been documented for a while.
Memory gain is noteworthy, which is the article's "wow" factor, but everyone's just knee-jerk smirking so ... here's a few random articles to gross you out about the wild world of trading microbiota and, for better or worse, changing your personality:
* "My butt made me crave candy."[1]
* "Gee, I'm not bipolar anymore thanks to my husband's butt juice infusion."[2]
I would recommend the site https://gutbrainaxistherapeutics.com for learning more about Microbiota Transplant Therapy (MTT) and its opportunities, especially for Autism and Pitt-Hopkins Syndrome.
I’ll dig in more but my first question when I see this: who are the donors exactly? Like who decides what the ideal gut microbiome is and that John Doe is the guy to provide his fecal matter to the masses?
This seems to be a recent anti-science meme to dismiss studies that use mouse models. I'm sure there is an interesting line of discussion about the strengths and limits of those models, but that's probably a complex, nuanced thread to pull, not something you blow off with a hand-waving internet comment.
To some degree the other posts are just pointing out the misleading "assumed protagonist" of the title (which doesn't mention mice) but I was surprised to see that the majority of posts boiled down to "eek! mice!"
Yeah, it's a mouse study, but there are tons of human studies backing the whole gut-brain connection. There are even a bunch of books on it [1][2].
What's really cool is that the paper used low-dose capsaicin (just 5 μg/kg injected), and it completely restored hippocampal FOS activity and memory in older mice. Basically, that's the same stuff you get in cayenne pepper supplements - pretty easy to get your hands on.
I've long regarded the great variety of chilis as its own distinct food group. But wonderful as they are for flavoring food, quite often in my home, I'm not sure how much of an effect orally consumed capsaicin has on memory functioning.
Conceivably parenteral capsaicin has different effects on hippocampal integrity or physiology than achievable with ingestion. I'm not familiar enough with disposition of capsaicin in the gut to comment further. My question is whether capsaicin passes from gut into the circulation in any appreciable quantity. I suspect it doesn't but I couldn't say I know for sure. I'll have to add it to the already long list of things I need to look up.
IMO people should eat more fiber. A lot more fiber. It cleans the gut, the liver, absorbs cholesterol, slows insulin response and makes you feel full longer. The microbes in our guts need it to function.
Rather than jumping from one fad diet to another, just eat what you like and be sure to get a lot of fiber each day.
Agreed, but I think the mechanism relates to different microbes. If there are two microbes in your gut, and type A requires a dose of high-calorie, low-fiber food coming down the pipe every day, and type B is not able to reproduce as fast as type A but is able to live on high-fiber food, this tells you two things:
type A cannot have been living in humans thousands of years ago, but type B might have
type A benefits from making your brain worse at choosing healthy foods, and type B does not
This has been the recommendation for general health for as long as I have been alive. Fiber is really important and there are plenty of easy healthy options that are cheap, unlike the astroturfed beef checkoff primal diet
Also, while we're on the topic, if you ever find your self at the other end of the world in Tasmania, I highly recommend a visit to the MONA museum, which houses the Poo Machine.
i like how this research (and others related) kind of supports the idea that free will might be lacking. I still keep a pinch of skepticism about this idea, understanding that it's just a concept. But personally i like it, because it even fells a bit relieving... not to say that it helps you abandon responsibility, but it makes your stance on life easier, and pushes you not to blame yourself too much for your weaknesses.
> They showed that colonizing the guts of young mice with this bacterial species inhibited their performance on the object recognition and maze escape tasks, and that this deficit correlated with a reduction of activity in the hippocampus.
Great info. This is one of those things that it is much faster for an individual to take into their own hands to prove out, rather than waiting for the system to provide us with an answer. Too many decision makers who are unlikely to all be aligned with our own individual interests.
I got into bicycle touring a few years ago, and it’s an ultra-endurance activity which means burning 3- 4 times as many calories as I would on a sedentary day. My training rides were all local weekend overnighters in preparation for the big 1000 mile challenge ride, and they were no big deal.
On the big ride, about 3 days in I started experiencing bouts of intestinal distress which would put me into some of the blackest moods I can recall experiencing as an adult. My whole thought process broke down and I became ruthlessly nihilistic about everything. I was ready to tell my partner to go fuck himself, chuck my bike off a bridge and take an uber to the nearest airport.
But then when the intestinal distress subsided I came back to my senses and I was like “WTH was that all about?” It happened several times, to varying degrees of intensity over the 10 day tour. My eating strategy improved and I bought some cannabis which helped my manage the issue and I was able to complete the tour.
That was a few years ago and I’ve never experienced the black mood again. It has prompted me to believe that the mind-gut connection is much stronger than we might have been giving it credit for, and if you suffer from mood or cognition issues, big or small, you may want to investigate whether your guts and gut flora might be playing an influential role.
... in mice. So if any of this held in humans, I think you'd see reversal of old-age memory problems in people treated with antibiotics that kill Parabacteroides goldsteinii.
As far as I know, no such effect has been observed.
And this article claims inflamation from that strain, the NIH claims otherwise: "Parabacteroides goldsteinii
is a next-generation probiotic gut bacterium with significant anti-inflammatory and metabolic benefits, often reduced in obese or diseased states. "
Everyone's "poo-pooing" the article because the title doesn't mention mice, but, FWIW, stories of gut biota affecting humans behavior have been documented for a while.
Memory gain is noteworthy, which is the article's "wow" factor, but everyone's just knee-jerk smirking so ... here's a few random articles to gross you out about the wild world of trading microbiota and, for better or worse, changing your personality:
Crazy, right?I believe this research is totally true-- I had a lot of memories come back after
1. I stopped drinking heavily and using other drugs, i.e. marijuana
2. managed my diet to avoid heartburn without medication
3. schedule my meals so it was easier to sleep at night (always eat something for breakfast when I wake up)
I did not need any "poo infusion" or anything.
I had a gal bladder removal that didn't fix the problems the doctors thought it would and got a lot smarter about the kinds and variety of food I eat.
I believe alcohol in particular was really screwing up my gut biome and entire digestive system.
What did you do for heartburn? Just looking for ideas. I noticed reducing gluten helped me personally a lot
Your hypothesis here though is full of complicating factors.
For example
>I stopped drinking heavily and using other drugs, i.e. marijuana
Like the primary change you made was to cut out using a whole bunch of drugs with known, significant neurological effects.
There was a South Park episode about this years ago where everyone was trying to get it from Tom Brady.
I would recommend the site https://gutbrainaxistherapeutics.com for learning more about Microbiota Transplant Therapy (MTT) and its opportunities, especially for Autism and Pitt-Hopkins Syndrome.
I’ll dig in more but my first question when I see this: who are the donors exactly? Like who decides what the ideal gut microbiome is and that John Doe is the guy to provide his fecal matter to the masses?
This seems to be a recent anti-science meme to dismiss studies that use mouse models. I'm sure there is an interesting line of discussion about the strengths and limits of those models, but that's probably a complex, nuanced thread to pull, not something you blow off with a hand-waving internet comment.
To some degree the other posts are just pointing out the misleading "assumed protagonist" of the title (which doesn't mention mice) but I was surprised to see that the majority of posts boiled down to "eek! mice!"
I bet it started with people trying to 1-up other commenters via the usual “achtually…” and then proceeding with the “in mice” notice.
Yeah, it's a mouse study, but there are tons of human studies backing the whole gut-brain connection. There are even a bunch of books on it [1][2].
What's really cool is that the paper used low-dose capsaicin (just 5 μg/kg injected), and it completely restored hippocampal FOS activity and memory in older mice. Basically, that's the same stuff you get in cayenne pepper supplements - pretty easy to get your hands on.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28837738-the-mind-gut-co...
[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35210457-the-psychobioti...
I've long regarded the great variety of chilis as its own distinct food group. But wonderful as they are for flavoring food, quite often in my home, I'm not sure how much of an effect orally consumed capsaicin has on memory functioning.
Conceivably parenteral capsaicin has different effects on hippocampal integrity or physiology than achievable with ingestion. I'm not familiar enough with disposition of capsaicin in the gut to comment further. My question is whether capsaicin passes from gut into the circulation in any appreciable quantity. I suspect it doesn't but I couldn't say I know for sure. I'll have to add it to the already long list of things I need to look up.
IMO people should eat more fiber. A lot more fiber. It cleans the gut, the liver, absorbs cholesterol, slows insulin response and makes you feel full longer. The microbes in our guts need it to function.
Rather than jumping from one fad diet to another, just eat what you like and be sure to get a lot of fiber each day.
Agreed, but I think the mechanism relates to different microbes. If there are two microbes in your gut, and type A requires a dose of high-calorie, low-fiber food coming down the pipe every day, and type B is not able to reproduce as fast as type A but is able to live on high-fiber food, this tells you two things:
type A cannot have been living in humans thousands of years ago, but type B might have
type A benefits from making your brain worse at choosing healthy foods, and type B does not
Which kind would you rather have in your gut?
To do this eat stuff that grows and not further processed.
The post is about a scientific study and your response is your opinion with nothing else to back it up?
they IMO are trying to help by giving good ideas to keep a healthy gut. Add that to the study and at least to me, it´s a nice idea.
btw people, do drink water to keep up with the fiber. Otherwise it might not help.
> eat what you like and be sure to get a lot of fiber each day
Sure sounds like another fad diet.
> Sure sounds like another fad diet.
Yeah! A fad lasting millions of years of human evolution, however.
This has been the recommendation for general health for as long as I have been alive. Fiber is really important and there are plenty of easy healthy options that are cheap, unlike the astroturfed beef checkoff primal diet
The charitable interpretation is "just eat more fiber, regardless of the rest"
For those who may be interested in learning more about the gut and how it affects your body and brain, this is a great, accessible, read
https://www.amazon.com/Gut-inside-story-bodys-under-rated/dp...
Also, while we're on the topic, if you ever find your self at the other end of the world in Tasmania, I highly recommend a visit to the MONA museum, which houses the Poo Machine.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-07/mona-poo-machine-join...
The book
"Why Isn't My Brain Working?"
by Datis Kharrazian
published in 2014 talked about this over a decade ago.
Say the line HN!
i like how this research (and others related) kind of supports the idea that free will might be lacking. I still keep a pinch of skepticism about this idea, understanding that it's just a concept. But personally i like it, because it even fells a bit relieving... not to say that it helps you abandon responsibility, but it makes your stance on life easier, and pushes you not to blame yourself too much for your weaknesses.
> They showed that colonizing the guts of young mice with this bacterial species inhibited their performance on the object recognition and maze escape tasks, and that this deficit correlated with a reduction of activity in the hippocampus.
Great info. This is one of those things that it is much faster for an individual to take into their own hands to prove out, rather than waiting for the system to provide us with an answer. Too many decision makers who are unlikely to all be aligned with our own individual interests.
I got into bicycle touring a few years ago, and it’s an ultra-endurance activity which means burning 3- 4 times as many calories as I would on a sedentary day. My training rides were all local weekend overnighters in preparation for the big 1000 mile challenge ride, and they were no big deal.
On the big ride, about 3 days in I started experiencing bouts of intestinal distress which would put me into some of the blackest moods I can recall experiencing as an adult. My whole thought process broke down and I became ruthlessly nihilistic about everything. I was ready to tell my partner to go fuck himself, chuck my bike off a bridge and take an uber to the nearest airport.
But then when the intestinal distress subsided I came back to my senses and I was like “WTH was that all about?” It happened several times, to varying degrees of intensity over the 10 day tour. My eating strategy improved and I bought some cannabis which helped my manage the issue and I was able to complete the tour.
That was a few years ago and I’ve never experienced the black mood again. It has prompted me to believe that the mind-gut connection is much stronger than we might have been giving it credit for, and if you suffer from mood or cognition issues, big or small, you may want to investigate whether your guts and gut flora might be playing an influential role.
... in mice. So if any of this held in humans, I think you'd see reversal of old-age memory problems in people treated with antibiotics that kill Parabacteroides goldsteinii.
As far as I know, no such effect has been observed.
And this article claims inflamation from that strain, the NIH claims otherwise: "Parabacteroides goldsteinii is a next-generation probiotic gut bacterium with significant anti-inflammatory and metabolic benefits, often reduced in obese or diseased states. "
It's possible the specifics are different but that the overall idea still could work for humans. It seems worth at least exploring.
Mice mice mice. Tell me when you test on humans
I smell bad data. This sounds too good to be true and most studies of this kind have turned out to be false a few years down the line.
Edit: one of many examples: https://www.science.org/content/article/journal-retracts-inf...
It doesn't seem to link to any data at all so we can't check, but I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they used the "standard" P=0.05.
I think for something this unexpected you'd want a much lower P.