There’s two different effects hidden in that statement
> living in France
I have had similar experience where my gut health was immediately, noticeably better in Europe. I was eating the same foods and somehow it was better.
> Eating stinky raw cheeses and different fermented foods
Raw and fermented foods in cultures across the world are linked to better gut health. However, industrial fermentation and packaging won’t help you as much because the diversity of microbes drops and packaging often kills most of them. We need to bring back the culture of home fermentation.
>I have had similar experience where my gut health was immediately, noticeably better in Europe. I was eating the same foods and somehow it was better.
Could be due to you being in a better mental state. Gut-brain axis is very evident for me personally. If I am tense gut is the first to get affected.
But of course can never happen because it only takes a minority to cry about a few factual bad stories and present the fallacious "is it worth it" argument. "Is your epicurian enjoyment worth even one dead baby?" And a majority who have no reason to think much about it go along with it because no one will say "yes it's worth it" and few are able to articulate how the question was invalid in the first place.
The opposite minority argument, that variety, depth, richness, are important, not luxuries, don't have their own dead babies to present. They do exist, but they aren't visible except in aggregate. You can measure a change in average health over the course of entire generations, and from that you can extrapolate the change in number or frequency of deaths, and then you could compare numbers of dead babies. But you can't obviously show any particular cause & effect because there are so many other variables, and even if you could, it took entire generations whole lives lived and died before they could benefit anyway.
> my gut health was immediately, noticeably better in Europe
Its because a lot of the weird artificial junk that are allowed to be put into your food is illegal in Europe. Even things like popular sweeteners have been shown to have a negative effect on your gut health.
The preservatives in flour / bread / etc are illegal in Europe. My sister is allergic and can’t have any bread in the USA. But can in France and Italy.
I lived most of my life in an alpine European village; water was chlorinated and flourinated, more than in my current US location. There was a huge difference in mineral content, US water being almost distilled (1 to 3 French degrees hardness) VS something like 15-20 in Europe
Most sweeteners also have been shown to cause more weight gain than sugar (they screw up your metabolism). Unless you’re diabetic, there’s literally no reason to consume them.
I'd like to see a source on that, because (excessive) sugar literally causes diabetes.
And of course high sweetener consumption is must be strongly linked with in general high calorie input and overweight people trying to reduce calorie consumption.
Your first point probably isn't actually true. The research that first connected the two showed that across a population sugar consumption up -> diabetes rates up. But it turns out that when you control for weight the effect of sugar specifically is much much smaller. To the point where if you're a healthy weight your sweet tooth isn't moving the needle.
Oh that's not true at all. First I think they taste better, they're sweet without being syrup-y. Second it allows me to drink a lot of soda, 5+ cans a day adds up when it has calories. I have no expectation that it helps
me lose weight, it's just tastier water.
My wife recently got Kombucha mushroom from a friend, and got into fermenting it herself. Its trivial to do, you need to really screw up something for it to go wrong, tons of good bacteria inside. She takes some basic precautions like avoiding metal parts (since the drink becomes acidic), otherwise its on autopilot, good bacteria outcompete everything else for resources.
She mixes it with some cut fruits to get some sugars for fermentation, the result is very mild alcohol content (maybe 0.5%) and it tastes like cider. I mix it maybe 1:3 with water and its semi-eternal homemade drink. Can't really complain.
That and of course french cheese, we live maybe 5km from French border and for cheese its much better place than even Switzerland (sorry guys gruyere is great but french variety is huuuuge in comparison and they even usually have specialties like old dutch gouda which is taste heaven for me and various truffle-infused ones).
Fyi kombucha isn't made from a "mushroom". It's a combination of bacteria and yeast and can be found in the liquid itself or the pellicle (blob of organic tissue) that firms during fermentation.
This is about Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis.
Personally I take L. Reuteri supplements, which for me have made an unbelievable difference in suffering from IBS symptoms (and have some clinical evidence to support having an effect). This was a result a recommendation somewhere else on HN about 2 years ago now, so I'll pass it forward whenever the topic comes up.
In my experience it took about 3 months to see effects (during which time I did feel somewhat worse), and currently if something happens - i.e. I get sick - then there's a bit of reversion towards feeling bad. But: I was also able to stop taking them for about 6-9 months before it seemed like the effect was diminishing.
I consider myself a disciplined dieter. But no way I could endure 3 months of nothing - maybe being worse - to maybe see some benefits. How did you stay motivated thru those 3 months and any other tips? I’d be curious.
Should be noted that constipation relief is far from the only benefit that probiotics provide to your gut biome. Healthy gut biome has been linked to lower levels of depression and lots of other things seemingly unrelated.
Anecdotal but I'm on a very strict diet, to the point where I have the same thing every meal, every day. There's certain probiotics I take that help bowel movements and some that slow things down. It's very repeatable and given I eat the same thing every meal every day and I'm on a regular eating and activity schedule that leaves very little other variables.
My guess is that for regular people the benefit is insignificant but it's greater for people with issues (dysbiosis).
And the type of dysbiosis you have will determine the effect of the probiotics. For some it can slow motility or cause constipation and others increase motility or cause diarrhea.
There's so many internal variables with your gut microbiome and there's a general lack of reliable methods to test your microbiome. This makes tests like these really difficult and also makes it difficult to treat digestion issues. Because of this, all gastro doctors can really do is slap on IBS/IBS label but not really have a course of action with any decent success rate.
I had the exact opposite experience. when I stopped eating meat I got worse. When I stopped eating vegetables I got better. I’m not saying you shouldn’t eat vegetables, I’m saying your claim isn’t as strong as you think it is and peoples gut issues are different.
A lot of people go all in on increasing dietary fiber and then experience gut issues and think it must be the plants when they didn't work into it slowly enough. It's like going to the gym and and feeling sore all over all the time or even getting injured and then concluding that going to the gym is bad when no one told you that you should start easy. In my opinion there's harm in how people fail to communicate how to get started on plant based diets when they miss important issues like this that can permanently put people off from it.
People who have things which are exotic, rare, or complicated don’t present some kind of existence proof against advice directed at a general population which doesn’t have those conditions.
> living in France
I have had similar experience where my gut health was immediately, noticeably better in Europe. I was eating the same foods and somehow it was better.
> Eating stinky raw cheeses and different fermented foods
Raw and fermented foods in cultures across the world are linked to better gut health. However, industrial fermentation and packaging won’t help you as much because the diversity of microbes drops and packaging often kills most of them. We need to bring back the culture of home fermentation.
Could be due to you being in a better mental state. Gut-brain axis is very evident for me personally. If I am tense gut is the first to get affected.
The opposite minority argument, that variety, depth, richness, are important, not luxuries, don't have their own dead babies to present. They do exist, but they aren't visible except in aggregate. You can measure a change in average health over the course of entire generations, and from that you can extrapolate the change in number or frequency of deaths, and then you could compare numbers of dead babies. But you can't obviously show any particular cause & effect because there are so many other variables, and even if you could, it took entire generations whole lives lived and died before they could benefit anyway.
Its because a lot of the weird artificial junk that are allowed to be put into your food is illegal in Europe. Even things like popular sweeteners have been shown to have a negative effect on your gut health.
And of course high sweetener consumption is must be strongly linked with in general high calorie input and overweight people trying to reduce calorie consumption.
She mixes it with some cut fruits to get some sugars for fermentation, the result is very mild alcohol content (maybe 0.5%) and it tastes like cider. I mix it maybe 1:3 with water and its semi-eternal homemade drink. Can't really complain.
That and of course french cheese, we live maybe 5km from French border and for cheese its much better place than even Switzerland (sorry guys gruyere is great but french variety is huuuuge in comparison and they even usually have specialties like old dutch gouda which is taste heaven for me and various truffle-infused ones).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCOBY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXnSYfv6bCA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bongkrek_acid
The reasoning of this article seems to be "The study did not produce a significant result, therefore the treatment is ineffective".
But that is not how to think about significance.
Otherwise, you could show for any treatment that it is ineffective. By simply doing a study small enough to produce an insignificant result.
https://www.theregister.com/2014/01/20/haribo_gummy_bears_im...
My pithy comment was actually inspired by Sir Patrick Stewart's interview about his role in the Emoji movie: https://youtu.be/CgAIqP6hNlQ?t=215
Personally I take L. Reuteri supplements, which for me have made an unbelievable difference in suffering from IBS symptoms (and have some clinical evidence to support having an effect). This was a result a recommendation somewhere else on HN about 2 years ago now, so I'll pass it forward whenever the topic comes up.
In my experience it took about 3 months to see effects (during which time I did feel somewhat worse), and currently if something happens - i.e. I get sick - then there's a bit of reversion towards feeling bad. But: I was also able to stop taking them for about 6-9 months before it seemed like the effect was diminishing.
You mean claimed to provide.
My guess is that for regular people the benefit is insignificant but it's greater for people with issues (dysbiosis).
And the type of dysbiosis you have will determine the effect of the probiotics. For some it can slow motility or cause constipation and others increase motility or cause diarrhea.
There's so many internal variables with your gut microbiome and there's a general lack of reliable methods to test your microbiome. This makes tests like these really difficult and also makes it difficult to treat digestion issues. Because of this, all gastro doctors can really do is slap on IBS/IBS label but not really have a course of action with any decent success rate.
"Probiotics for gut health!" -- yeah, right. Get back to me in 10 years when you have some actual evidence.