Gut microbe imbalance and diabetes

RalfLott

Aaron_K123 wrote: »

I fully believe your microbiome can affect the way you digest and process food given your microbiomes important role in digestion. That said if you think that in the future we are going to control our intestinal flora in such a way as to "cure" diabetes then no, that isn't going to happen.

Wouldn't you agree there aren't any sure bets?

There were probably quite a few who doubted that oranges could cure scurvy or chocolate could cure syphilis.

BinaryPulsar

Aaron_K123 wrote: »

I fully believe your microbiome can affect the way you digest and process food given your microbiomes important role in digestion. That said if you think that in the future we are going to control our intestinal flora in such a way as to "cure" diabetes then no, that isn't going to happen.

I can't help but feel that "microbiome" is the new "quantum mechanics" in terms of public perception. Its this thing they have heard about from science that sounds nebulous and confusing and therefore full of possibilities so they hang their hopes on it or make it serve their pet interests or issues. I remember when quantum mechanics was pointed at scientific confirmation of chakras or crystal power or whatever and now it seems that the microbiome is being pointed at as supportive of the idea that you can cure illnesses or genetic defects through diet.

The bacteria in our gut help us process food. If the bacterial population shifts or changes it is quite possible that certain foods you will digest "better" (ie get more calorically or nutritionally from) and some not as well. But this isn't going to reverse diabetes.

I have Nature access so if you want the full study you can hit me up and I'll send it to you.

The only thing I can confirn from my experience (and supported by obvious logic) is that a messed up microbiome can cause severe GI problems, malabsorption disorder, and as a result of that there are other symptoms/disorders I developed that cleared up when I changed my diet. So, problems with the microbiome interfering with the ability to digest food can cause other symptoms (also very logical). And a lot of doctors aren't going to understand this. They may know there is a link. But, they don't know how to deal with it. We definitely need more research and understanding in this area. And there is a lot going on right now. And I find it valuable as a result of my experience. Some people go the other direction. By lack of education they reject everything. But, if a person has GI symptoms, they might want to consider the possibility of a messed up microbiome.

Yes, it was weird when people were making mystical claims about quantum physics. My husband is a physicist, so we encountered that a lot from people asking him. Of course it's a misunderstanding of quantum physics and twisting it to confirm the existence of mystical ideas (and that whole law of attraction thing).

Aaron_K123

Wouldn't you agree there aren't any sure bets?

There were probably quite a few who doubted that oranges could cure scurvy or chocolate could cure syphilis.

Yes but in that regard there "Aren't any sure bets" on anything so you can't say "there aren't any sure bets" and then follow that with a suggested course of action on the basis of that.

The phrase "we don't know" should never be followed by "therefore we should do this". If we don't know then we don't know and so we shouldn't act on what we just happen to feel is true.

We understand enough about biology and biochemistry to make judgements about the likelyhood that something with help. There is no reason to believe that if you are type I diabetic that changing your gut flora would somehow allow you to start producing insulin (it wouldn't) nor is there a reason to believe that if you are type II diabetic that changing your gut flora would somehow influence the protein binding of insulin to its receptor.

Its hanging your hope on the unknown, its God of the gaps. Better to act on what we do know then to come up with a "what if" and then spend your life acting like what you want to be true is true.

BinaryPulsar

One other thing. That's only interesting. I haven't looked into it a ton. But, when I developed these issues after antibiotics I also developed elevated rheumatoid antibody factor. The field of rheumatology is seeing a possible link between gut flora changes and rheumatoid arthritis. It might just be coincidence, but still interesting. And it certainly wouldn't apply to everyone. I also developed trigeminal nerve pain. Which is triggered by eating food. It can be important in certain symptoms to look at what is triggering the symptoms. Sometimes not enough doctors have any scientific curiosity.

Aaron_K123

Lets put it another way. If repopulating your gut microbiome with a different mix of species had an effect on diabeties then people who were on antibiotics would occasionally be "cured" of type II diabeties. Anytime you take a long course antibiotic which millions of people daily you essentially eradicate your microbiome and after the treatment is over you will have some digestive issues until your microbiome becomes repopulated likely with a different mix of species, whatever happens to take over from that initial eradication. If simply mixing up your gut microbiome or altering it significantly could influence insulin resistance to the point of "curing" type II diabetes then we would expect to see "cure" with some significant frequency after treatment with any antibiotic.

Your gut microbiome aids in food digestion, it is not mystical or magical. Unless you can explain why changing food digestion would alter a low-affinity insulin receptor or the protein binding characteristics of insulin on what basis do you hold this belief?

Aaron_K123

" that a messed up microbiome can cause severe GI problems, malabsorption disorder, and as a result of that there are other symptoms/disorders"

"problems with the microbiome interfering with the ability to digest food can cause other symptoms (also very logical)"

" if a person has GI symptoms, they might want to consider the possibility of a messed up microbiome."

I agree with all those statements. My skepticism comes in with its affect on diabeties as how food absorption would influence the binding affinity of your insulin receptors (in the case of type II) or just make you somehow capable of producing insulin in the first place (in the case of type I). I can imagine it influencing your blood sugar levels as it can definately affect absorbption of what you ingest, but thats about it.

Out of curiosity did you experience gastrointestinal distress after being treated for a bacterial infection with antibiotics? That is the most common cause. You mentioned it was "due to diet" so I was wondering.

"Yes, it was weird when people were making mystical claims about quantum physics. My husband is a physicist, so we encountered that a lot from people asking him. Of course it's a misunderstanding of quantum physics and twisting it to confirm the existence of mystical ideas (and that whole law of attraction thing)."

I wasn't a physicist but I could see that for what it is. I am a biochemist/molecular biologist so I'm just pointing out that as a way of analogizing how the whole "microbiome as cause of X" looks to me. It probably looks how the claims of the public about quantum physics looked to a physicist. Basically taking something they don't really understand and making something up about it and then defending that claim by arguing "well we don't know enough so you can't tell me I'm wrong"

Aaron_K123

" But, when I developed these issues after antibiotics"

Ah I just saw you answered my question in your next post.

Yeah, antibiotics for treatment of bacterial infections are broad-spectrum and will also kill the bacteria that make up your microbiome. You will have to "repopulate" your gut flora after a long-course antibiotic treatment and chances are it won't be the same as before you took the treatment. Thats not really a bad thing, not trying to scare you with that, but until the repopulation you WILL have GI issues. That is to be expected though. Its just generally considered that some short-term GI issues are better than dying of sepsis from a bacterial infection.

BinaryPulsar

No. All of my health issues started after the antibiotics and was worsened by an injury from a vasoconstrictor (which was very wrongly prescribed). I already explained what happened in this thread. It's a long story. I was incorrectly overtreated with antibiotics. I had a red spot on my nose. They kept misdiagnosing me. It was incredibly stupid. And I also had a severe allergic reaction to Bactrim DS. It was prescribed to me when I had no infection and after two other antibiotics. I am in Canada. They said I needed a proper diagnosis from an ENT. But, since the wait was too long they just kept giving me antibiotics. The swab was clear of all bacteria.

I also don't see a link between diabetes and gut microbiome. It isn't something I have looked into.

Aaron_K123

Well I certainly can't speak to whether or not antibiotic treatment was appropriate in your case or not. It can cause issues though for sure and shouldn't be prescribed lightly.

I'm in drug development in my current career so I am working on developing antibiotics. Part of our testing is to test also against E.coli other gram positive/negative bacteria to see if the potential drug also affects those other species (and thus your microbiome). If it does it is broad spectrum and is of less interest than something that is specific to what we are trying to treat.

Ideally you have an antibiotic that targets the specific pathogen and an accurate diagnostic to diagnose that the patient has that pathogen. Then treatment has none of these side-effects. That said in an imperfect world diagnostics and diagnoses aren't 100% and many antibiotics are broad-spectrum to make sure whatever it is that is causing the infection/issue is eradicated at the expense of your microbiome. I don't think this is wrong, its just practical in an imperfect situation.

As for the diabeties thing I am highly skeptical given the amount that "microbiome" has become the new "quantum physics" as far as explanations from a lay-public are concerned. It is overused and not well understood. Don't misunderstand me to be saying that our microbiomes aren't important to our overall health, they are.

BinaryPulsar

Yeah, antibiotics are important and necessary. And should not be overprescribed. Mistakes will happen. My situation was very poorly handled by some bad doctors. And my test was negative of bacteria. They needed an ENT to just look. And I was overtreated. All doctors in my situation agree that happened. I ended up driving to the US to see an ENT. My husband's best friend is an ENT. He said I did not have an infection and they needed to stop giving me antibiotics which had made me very ill and I was having an allergic reaction (every inch of my body was covered in a rash). Drugs need to be used responsibly. No good doctor would agree with what happened to me. My Rheumatologist has been the best. She stopped this madness and said no more meds and she apologized on behalf of the medical field. I probably would have continued to recover fine from the antibiotics if six months later my life hadn't been turned upside down by being wrongly prescribed a vasoconstrictor. It's a very complicated situation. Thankfully I have a good doctor now, though the damage has been done. And I have lost a year of my life to this. But, I am improving now.

Aaron_K123

Yeah sounds like you got some poor treatment but also that you have a rational view of the whole situation. I'm glad you ended up getting it sorted and hopefully you will be as good as new in the near future. I imagine it is incredibly frustrating to have poor health due to mistakes made from people you entrust with your health.

BinaryPulsar

Aaron_K123 wrote: »

Yeah sounds like you got some poor treatment but also that you have a rational view of the whole situation. I'm glad you ended up getting it sorted and hopefully you will be as good as new in the near future. I imagine it is incredibly frustrating to have poor health due to mistakes made from people you entrust with your health.

Thank you! I really appreciate that!

LokiGrrl

Aaron_K123 wrote: »

Lets put it another way. If repopulating your gut microbiome with a different mix of species had an effect on diabeties then people who were on antibiotics would occasionally be "cured" of type II diabeties. Anytime you take a long course antibiotic which millions of people daily you essentially eradicate your microbiome and after the treatment is over you will have some digestive issues until your microbiome becomes repopulated likely with a different mix of species, whatever happens to take over from that initial eradication. If simply mixing up your gut microbiome or altering it significantly could influence insulin resistance to the point of "curing" type II diabetes then we would expect to see "cure" with some significant frequency after treatment with any antibiotic.

Your gut microbiome aids in food digestion, it is not mystical or magical. Unless you can explain why changing food digestion would alter a low-affinity insulin receptor or the protein binding characteristics of insulin on what basis do you hold this belief?

I'm not sure this is true. Different antibiotics target different species, and there's not one that's effective against every single species. It will surely change up the mix, but it's not eradicating the whole thing and starting fresh.

I don't think changing your gut flora would cure diabetes, but I have read some interesting things on gut flora transplants that make me believe that further study is definitely worth pursuing in terms of what it could do for IBS and absorption disorders, and possibly even obesity.

lemurcat12

From what I've read it seems the association with obesity is not "my gut biome caused me to get fat" but that what one eats affects gut biome. If the person changes their diet to a more nutrient dense one (assuming they didn't get get fat eating extra portions of a healthful diet, although one could), their gut biome will change.

This is obviously different from the problems caused by antibiotics, and especially for the people with conditions that require extensive antibiotic use that destroys the gut population in significant ways, which is where things like transplants seem promising.

ForecasterJason

I think there are ways that gut bacteria can indirectly affect diabetes, but I don't know about a direct link. Given the implications that gut bacteria has for stress and sleep, and the resulting consequence of those factors on blood sugar control, I would say that correcting gut flora imbalances may be able to provide help for some diabetics.

RalfLott

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skymningen

ForecasterJason wrote: »

I think there are ways that gut bacteria can indirectly affect diabetes, but I don't know about a direct link. Given the implications that gut bacteria has for stress and sleep, and the resulting consequence of those factors on blood sugar control, I would say that correcting gut flora imbalances may be able to provide help for some diabetics.

Disclaimer: I work in this field.
It is way too early in the morning and I am still at home and don't have full access to my collection of publications, so no links here for now. Yes, it does. You have to keep in mind that there are multiple forms of diabetes as well, some of them it is (at least in some cases) yet unknown what causes the problem. But it has been shown that abundance of different gut bacteria is associated with diabetes. Now, correlation does not show causality, but it has also been shown that improving the gut flora could help patients to take need less medication and generally be less impacted by the disease. It is not a cure, sure, but it is definitely going to be part of the treatment in the future.

skymningen

lemurcat12 wrote: »

From what I've read it seems the association with obesity is not "my gut biome caused me to get fat" but that what one eats affects gut biome. If the person changes their diet to a more nutrient dense one (assuming they didn't get get fat eating extra portions of a healthful diet, although one could), their gut biome will change.

This is obviously different from the problems caused by antibiotics, and especially for the people with conditions that require extensive antibiotic use that destroys the gut population in significant ways, which is where things like transplants seem promising.

Actually it has been shown (by Ruth Ley, I would have to check which publication it is) that if you transform the gut microbiome of (genetically closely related) obese mice to lean mice the lean mice do get fat. So there is definitely both: You gut microbiom can cause you to gain or lose weight easier or harder, but if you try to do that by altering your lifestyle it will also changed based on diet, activity level, alcohol intake and so on. Research in this is still ongoing. I am kind of a part of it (not directly working with obese people, but I am involved in studies which try to determine the general relation of lifestyle and gut microbiome).

lemurcat12

That post is a year old.

I am aware of those studies, and was (or of similar ones) a year ago, but I think that's different from "my gut biome caused me to get fat."

You affect your gut biome to a great deal by what you eat, one, and, two, we may crave what we crave based on gut biome (I think it has to be more complicated), but we aren't mice, we are humans, and can control what we eat and how many calories.

From personal experience, it's possible to change your diet dramatically without much trouble and it's obviously possible to control one's weight (lose or gain) without changing gut biome.

Not saying it's not important or interesting to study.

skymningen

lemurcat12 wrote: »

That post is a year old.
You affect your gut biome to a great deal by what you eat, one, and, two, we may crave what we crave based on gut biome (I think it has to be more complicated), but we aren't mice, we are humans, and can control what we eat and how many calories.

This is done on mice because you can control exactly that the "transmission" mice and control get the same food. With humans, it is much harder to study, but there have been some similar experiments by a company in the US. (Not published of course, as they are trying to develop a dietary supplement based on it.) "My microbiome made me do it" is not a good excuse for being overweight, but it can definitely be part of the cause. You changing your diet and losing weight does change the microbiome and there are studies going on right now which will most likely show that the success of maintenance after losing is highly dependent on how close to "lean human like" your microbiome got during the weight loss.

This thread might be old, but the topic is pretty hot right now.

RalfLott

@skymningen, your insights as an insider are appreciated. I'm (mostly) all ears.

lemurcat12

skymningen wrote: »

lemurcat12 wrote: »

That post is a year old.
You affect your gut biome to a great deal by what you eat, one, and, two, we may crave what we crave based on gut biome (I think it has to be more complicated), but we aren't mice, we are humans, and can control what we eat and how many calories.

This is done on mice because you can control exactly that the "transmission" mice and control get the same food. With humans, it is much harder to study, but there have been some similar experiments by a company in the US. (Not published of course, as they are trying to develop a dietary supplement based on it.) "My microbiome made me do it" is not a good excuse for being overweight, but it can definitely be part of the cause. You changing your diet and losing weight does change the microbiome and there are studies going on right now which will most likely show that the success of maintenance after losing is highly dependent on how close to "lean human like" your microbiome got during the weight loss.

This thread might be old, but the topic is pretty hot right now.

Not saying it's a bad topic. It's just hard to respond when someone comments on something you posted a year ago, and you no longer remember the context.

Here's a question:

If you get more calories from foods, presumably it's because your gut biome is able to break down the foods more effectively, no? Or is there some other cause?

So someone might get LESS than expected from foods, but you'd never be getting extra calories beyond what's in the foods from the same foods.

The foods hardest to break down would seem to be whole foods (fiber, for example), and indeed people who switch to a higher fiber diet may have trouble at first, and people with higher fiber (and more diverse produce in general) diets have much more diverse gut biomes, as I understand it (and that's generally considered good).

This seems to suggest that people with more diverse (healthier or "leaner") gut biomes would be more effective at turning food into calories, rather than less. That's why I tend to suspect the difference with humans (the poop pill things) relates more to cravings -- which I think is hard to separate from cravings born out of habit.

Curious -- and would love a link to study reports -- what the theory is as to mice gaining on the same calories and food, if that is controlled (it's not an ad lib one where the mice eat as much as they eat).

skymningen

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Curious -- and would love a link to study reports -- what the theory is as to mice gaining on the same calories and food, if that is controlled (it's not an ad lib one where the mice eat as much as they eat).

I am terribly busy at work today, but I will try and set aside some time during the weekend to collect a "best of" of my publication list for this topic. Probably a good thing to prepare for my PhD thesis work anyway.