Gut biome management for arthritis

[rpjazzguitar]

I was surprised recently when a hand surgeon declined to inject a painful joint and, instead, recommended a strict diet designed to rejigger my gut biome. He said I should buy a book called Super Gut and follow the "simple" instructions (I got the book, but the instructions didn't seem all that simple).

Then, I was surprised again when my PCP agreed with him.

Apparently, it has been the subject of some recent research and does reduce inflammation.

Has anybody tried this? Report?

[dot75]

This came up in another thread recently... I might even have posted something but can't find it...

This may be the most unhelpful post ever made - hope someone else remembers & can chip in...

[garybaldy]

Is this for Osteo or Rheumatoid?

[pauln]

As guitarists, probably most of us entertain some concern about our hands and fingers as we age.

Every morning when the heating element of my stove is still hot after turning it off (after preparing water for my first cup of coffee), I hold my hands over the element with my finger tips opposed and touching.

I press very lightly and the heat promotes the more felt than heard release of little snap crackle pops within. Then I form fists and repeat back with the finger tips touching, etc. I start off very easy and gently increase pressure slightly each cycle, until everything is worked out. The idea is to let the heat and very slight pressure work to let go of all the little snicks rather than clearing them all in one second of
cold exertion, a common bad habit.

I have no evidence, but I have to believe anything you do regularly long term makes a difference.

[rpjazzguitar]

Either "osteo" or "osteo with an inflammatory component". Depends which doctor you ask.

[Bop Head]

The gut biome and the guts in general in recent years came into research's focus for having been totally neglected and underrated in their effects on physical and mental health.

Imagine an archaic rudimentary creature like a worm, it consists of not much more than a gut, food in at the front side, shit out at the back. I believe into evolution theory according to Darwin, so simple creatures of that type are our very ancestors after microorganisms (the gut biome consists of the latter BTW). Our guts are our primal brain, surrounded by millions of nerv cells, with a direct connection to the head via the vagus nerve. There is a reason why there are so many images like "gut feeling" etc. in languages.

Modern Western "civilized" lifestyle and nutrition and the desastrous state of our environment are responsible for the unhealthy state of so many people. Healing the guts and building a healthy and diverse biome can have very positive effects on e.g. allergies or even (beginning acquired) diabetes and on mental health problems (speaking from experience regarding the latter).

The question is if you are ready to do without many things, e.g. carbohydrates (refined sugar, white bread) and too much meat ...

I recommend consuming probiotic food every day (all organic and un-pasteurized: plain yoghurt, kefir, kombucha, apple vinegar, sauerkraut/kimchi etc.). Curcuma a.k.a. tumeric (best heated in vegetable fat together with pepper which resolves the liposoluble substance curcumine) in combination with probiotics can heal the so called "leaky gut syndrome", e.g. responsible for many allergies.

EDIT: Fortunately at 50 no problems with athritis yet ...

[Bop Head]

I hope I did not scare anyone away from this thread by mentioning Charles Darwin's name LOL. (Isn't that illegal meanwhile in some US states?)

Anyway thanks for pointing me to that guy William Davis MD who wrote "Super Gut" and another book called "Wheat Belly". It turns out that every subsidiary of Munich's public library in every city district has a copy of both books translated into German, so it will be easy to borrow them for free. (English original and several translations of "Wheat Belly" in the Internet Archive BTW.)

The guy has a Youtube channel as well. I watched one of the videos and am now looking for a yoghurt machine that let's you ferment your home-made yoghurt for 36 hours at 40 degrees Celsius LOL (contrary to the up to only 6 hours of fermentation for a yoghurt bought at the supermarket) which highly increases the number of a subspecies of lactobacillus reuterii (yoghurt producing bacteria) as they proliferate exponentially. I am opposed to the idea of doing the yoghurt home-production in the baking oven, I do not like it running for 36 hours unattended even at only 40 degrees LOL.

[rpjazzguitar]

One anti-Darwin thought occurs to me in the form of a question.

If Darwin was right, why don't I like the taste of most healthy foods?

How does that help natural selection?

[Bop Head]

One anti-Darwin thought occurs to me in the form of a question.

If Darwin was right, why don't I like the taste of most healthy foods?

How does that help natural selection?

If I understood Darwin correctly he was not talking about the survival of the strongest (which is the misunderstanding of the so called "Social Darwinism") but of the survival of those who are most capable to adapt to a changing situation. So the sad truth might be if you are not able to get used to healthier food you are in danger of extinction as a guitarist because of your athritis ...

EDIT: TBH this is not really a direct answer to your question. But the crux of the matter might become the choice of either giving up dear food habits or the dear guitar ...

I am lucky having grown up with healthy food which become even more healthy after my father had a very serious heart attack in 1989 (30% chance of survival). Changing to a mostly Mediterranean diet gave him 15 more years. So it was probably easier for me than for most people to change to low-carb and ketogene. It was really worth it.

[jameslovestal]

One anti-Darwin thought occurs to me in the form of a question.

If Darwin was right, why don't I like the taste of most healthy foods?

How does that help natural selection?

If, because one was raised on processed\unhealthy foods and thus one doesn't like the taste of healthy foods and therefore avoids them, then the odds are higher they will die before-their-time. Their offsprings (likely raised with the same poor eating habits), will either learn from that or not.

[RJVB]

Apparently, it has been the subject of some recent research and does reduce inflammation.

I'm only a biologist, not an MD, but I'd say keep getting your injections until your biome (intestinal flora?) is back in, or in better, shape. I think it's much more likely that that will help prevent (= reduce the chance of) future inflammation in your joints rather than actually make the current inflammation go away. If at least we're talking about the kind that tend not to go away "on their own".

[sgosnell]

To be successful, an animal only has to live long enough to reproduce. Living longer than that isn't essential to the survival of the species.

[rpjazzguitar]

To be successful, an animal only has to live long enough to reproduce. Living longer than that isn't essential to the survival of the species.

I think that's right. Does it argue that young people don't need to worry about this?

[ccroft]

I'm almost 70 and have a little experience. I had one of those cysts that grows out from a finger joint on my fretting hand a few years ago.

I'd also been having terrible bloating, stomach pain, and I won't mention the other symptom. I traced it to my love of Pale Ale, which I soon realized is a gluten A-Bomb. I replaced it with wine or scotch, and while I still enjoy glutenous foods I don't eat them like I used to. Solved my gut problems.

I was a little reluctant to accept surgery on one of my favourite body parts so I stalled for a few months. The cyst went away. I also used to have trouble with cysts in my earlobes from the hippy-days piercings, and they've stopped acting up too.

And I used to make fun of the whole gluten-free thing: "I'll have the pasta with extra gluten please!"

[RJVB]

To be successful, an animal only has to live long enough to reproduce. Living longer than that isn't essential to the survival of the species.

The simpler the animal, the truer that is. Go a bit higher up and you realise that it is probably more advantageous to ensure that the genes of your offspring get to reproduce.

Darwin probably hated double negations but what he should have pitched is the non-survival of the non-fittest.

[RyanM]

One anti-Darwin thought occurs to me in the form of a question.

If Darwin was right, why don't I like the taste of most healthy foods?

How does that help natural selection?

Darwin would probably say we’ve evolved to seek out salt fat and sugar, and now that we’ve isolated those you haven’t had a chance to develop your taste for whole foods.

Everything is an acquired taste, just like starting to drink beer, wine, black coffee.

Cut the junk, try fasting, reset your gut and tastebuds and you will start to enjoy healthy foods.

My thing now is green smoothies. One or two cups of kale/spinach, with some frozen fruit, banana, almond/oat milk and kefir (like yogurt but more probiotics for gut health). Blend it. You can add other things like flax seed, protein powder, other fruits and vegetables. Just tastes like banana and gives you a lot of nutrients and fiber.

[dot75]

.... yoghurt machine that let's you ferment your home-made yoghurt for 36 hours at 40 degrees Celsius LOL.

My youngest had a phase when yoghurt & couscous was the only thing he wanted to eat,

heat whole milk to 85 C, (add powdered milk if you want thicker yoghurt), allow to cool to 45 C, stir in a couple of tablespoons of the last batch

(you gotta buy the first starter yoghurt) & put in a thermos flask for 24 - 36 hours....mine used to go under the stairs where the heating pipes ran but

that turned out to be unnecessary. Works a treat...We had 2 1L flasks on the go at one stage.

[dot75]

One anti-Darwin thought occurs to me in the form of a question.

If Darwin was right, why don't I like the taste of most healthy foods?

How does that help natural selection?

Fat salt & sugar are really hard to get in nature, for fat you usualy have to catch an animal, not always easy,

some (seasonal) nuts & seeds are high in fat but tend to need processing & you have to eat a lot to get any real value.

It's not coincidental that the word Salary is from soldiers being paid in salt, also hard to get, the trans saharan slave trade

was Gold, Ivory, Slaves North, Salt, Cloth, Iron south. The salt mines in Mauritania were still around & running on slave labour

in the 2000's.

Sugar in the form of honey has long been highly valued, again, hard to get in the wild - the bees object & people take / took

insane risks to gather it, I've seen men climb 100+ foot high trees / climb down cliff faces in Zaire to raid bees nests.

Hundreds of thousands of years of that, & now the shops (we have shops!!) full of 'food' that's pumped full of fat/salt/sugar etc.

& it's designed to be addictive...

On a personal note, 20 odd years ago there was a food contamination issue in the UK, A dye called Sudan Red, a known carcinogen, got into the food chain.

All the major supermarkets had to recall hundreds of items, I was working for one of them & when I got to work my line manager told me she was adding me to

the list - she was printing out four pages of A4 paper of that supermarkets recalled items. I said I didn't need it.

'Have you not seen the news?', I said I had but didn't eat that stuff, she said 'It's in everything, 300+ items'

I don't need it

'It's free, I'm printing & laminating the sheets & everyone's getting a pack of bluetac to fix them to the inside of their freezer door,
you've got three months to return stuff'

blank look from me...'you've got young children, you need to take this seriously' I said thanks but I'm ok, my wife & I cook everyday anyway.

'what do you mean ? what do you eat ?'

I explained we bought meat, fish, vegetables, rice, pasta, beans, grains, etc etc & cooked food - there were lots of very bemused looks...

[sgosnell]

The simpler the animal, the truer that is. Go a bit higher up and you realise that it is probably more advantageous to ensure that the genes of your offspring get to reproduce.

Darwin probably hated double negations but what he should have pitched is the non-survival of the non-fittest.

True, humans and some other mammals produce totally helpless offspring, so it's advantageous for the mother to survive long enough to allow the offspring to be able to survive on their own. But the father's work is done as soon as the pregnancy begins. Many mammals have evolved social systems in which the child rearing is a communal responsibility, so the mother's survival isn't absolutely necessary. Survival into old age, beyond child-bearing age, is not necessary nor even advantageous. Eskimos once put their old people who could no longer contribute to the group welfare out on the ice alone, to be frozen and/or eaten by predators. That's a coldly rational tradition, but even today some younger people complain about having to support older citizens through social security and other retirement systems. The growing percentage of older people in the population is becoming a concern. While I'm not yet ready for self-sacrifice at 76, I do know that my death would not affect the human population at all. My gut biome is of no concern to anyone other than myself, and perhaps my family.

As for gut biome controlling health, I'm not sure where I stand on that. There is much woo out there concerning human health, and even a brief look at YouTube will find lots of it. But that doesn't necessarily prove that it's all woo. I haven't seen any reproducible scientific studies proving this one way or another, but I'm not a trained physician and I haven't paid close attention to the subject. I have tried probiotics, with no noticeable difference for me. I'm agnostic.

[rpjazzguitar]

Someone mentioned a recent study proving that commercial probiotics don't work.

But, that may not apply to kifir which was recommended to me by the gastroenterologist who pioneered fecal transplants.

[jameslovestal]

Someone mentioned a recent study proving that commercial probiotics don't work.

But, that may not apply to kifir which was recommended to me by the gastroenterologist who pioneered fecal transplants.

What is a "commercial probiotics"? I tend to assume the term indicates a probiotic in pill\tablet\gummy form.

I classify kefir as a natural product like yogurt, kimchi, natto, etc... (and with a Japanese mom, I grew up on kimchi and natto as part of our everyday diet).

[Doctor Jeff]

Someone mentioned a recent study proving that commercial probiotics don't work.

But, that may not apply to kifir which was recommended to me by the gastroenterologist who pioneered fecal transplants.

Are you saying he was a shitty doctor?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

I have a bit of experience with this, in fact just this week wrote a scrip for some fecal flora tablets (VOWST) that I heard last night cost $19K for 12 pills. And it's just POOP!

The gut microbiome is an interesting and evolving field. I wrote a short summary about it for a nursing textbook chapter I authored recently. We still don't know much about it, despite it obviously being very important.

I am skeptical that a simple diet change or probiotic will make a huge difference for many conditions, but there are some where it certainly does. There's virtually no risk with adjusting your diet or taking a probiotic, so give it a try.

[RJVB]

(you gotta buy the first starter yoghurt) & put in a thermos flask for 24 - 36 hours....mine used to go under the stairs where the heating pipes ran but

I make my own "fermented milk" (aka buttermilk). Started out with the store-bought version which is much easier to find in this semi-islamic country than actual buttermilk, and which will be sold out periodically. I now have a few bottles of the home-made stuff, in which I always leave maybe the last 2cm which I then fill up with regular sterilised (UHT) milk (usually the cheapest we can find). I can't stand the boiled-milk taste of that stuff "raw" but after leaving a bottle with a new mixture out for a day that taste is completely gone.
Periodically I add some run-off from fruit from the garden, for a bit richer taste.

What is a "commercial probiotics"? I tend to assume the term indicates a probiotic in pill\tablet\gummy form.

I suppose he meant store-bought yoghurts and the like, e.g. Danone Biogarde. Danone long made a claim that was good for your intestinal flora, until a study showed an absolute lack of effect (years ago already) and they had to remove the explicit claim. Not illogical if you know that the living organisms in there are probably killed off during the processing required to be able to market the stuff. I do indeed vaguely recall that a more recent study showed there is and effect, or at least that there are still living probiotics in it.

FWIW: the simplest trick to make "buttermilk" is to add some vinegar to regular milk. It'll turn, and if you leave it out of the fridge long enough it will take on a yoghurt-like consistency. So the question is a bit to what extent the store-bought starter really seeds your milk or whether it's just an acidic catalyser. Standard milk sterilisation (let alone pasteurisation) is probably not aggressive enough to kill all micro-organisms present in milk.

[rpjazzguitar]

The Hand Surgeon recommended following the "simple instructions" (his words) in a book called Super Gut. Same author as Wheat Belly.

The instructions didn't strike me as simple and even less as easy to implement. The gist of it is no grains, no sugar and lots of adequatelyfermented yogurt and vegetables -- I think. And, just to review, that no-grains thing wasn't a typo.

I watched an hour video by a microbiome expert (or something like that), Dr. Stollman, which seemed to indicate that changing the biome is a proven remedy in C-diff via fecal transplant, but there's no proven value to microbiome changes in treating any other condition. If I understood him correctly. Still, there are indications that biome issues are related to health issues.

It also turns out that there are commercial services to which you can send a fecal sample and you'll receive a list of what they found. It isn't clear that this list has any proven medical value.

The Hand Surgeon suggested I should make and eat my own pickles. But, he wasn't thinking about salt content. Why should he? He's a Hand Surgeon. If my salty hands don't hurt, he's a success. Blood pressure is my PCP's problem, right?

Dr. Stollman's talk made one thing clear. The microbiome issue is very complex and barely understood. He said that they got very lucky with fecal transplant for C-diff, but that figuring out treatments for other conditions is going to take a lot of work. Bear in mind, for example, that there has been a fatality attributed to a fecal transplant because the donor had an undiagnosed pathogen for which they weren't screening at the time. Dr. Stollman suggested (I'll paraphrase) that they learn about such possibilities one disaster at a time.

[sgosnell]

I would assume that commercial probiotics are the capsules sold in stores everywhere, in the vitamin/supplement aisle. There are many brands/strengths/species available. Bacteria can survive the freeze drying process well, and be revived by being rehydrated in a suitable environment. Whether they do anything valuable is a different question.