Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | stephenitis's commentslogin

You seed the gut with nutrients. having lots of fiber and a varied diet increases the number of species that an adult has which is between a couple hundred to a thousand or so. Our guts are generally dominated by a bunch of beneficial bacteria.

which for many is not the case for a variety of social economic or behavioral reasons. Add in with explosions of bacterial populations due to alcohol or sugar and you can see how we can change our gut biome drastically from week to week.


I’ve noticed I really need to keep alcohol and sugar consumption in check. Sometimes it seems like one drink is enough to kick off a gut ecosystem collapse, and other times my gut is more resistant to the effects. Definitely trying to increase fiber consumption significantly.


How are you judging the impact of things on your gut/microbiome?


Toilet visits?


How is one judging a "gut ecosystem collapse" from toilet visits?


Loose and unsatisfying stool?


How do you know that is a “gut ecosystem collapse” as opposed to hypermotility? Or an overgrowth of the gut ecosystem? Or a problem with the intestinal lining?

Observing that if you eat/drink something specific then you get the shits is valid. Concluding that it is due to a specific mechanism is not valid unless you have something objective like a test supporting that.

It’s like if your train is late and you just conclude that it must be because the steam condenser’s gasket is leaking based on nothing. Maybe true, or maybe the conductor broke his leg, or there is a signaling failure.


Ummm…because all of those symptoms you listed are symptoms of gut dysbiosis…?

Why do you need to know what the mechanism is to avoid mistakes? - if something fucks you, don’t do it.

Encourage others to do the same.

Not a controversial take!


[Gut Flora Summit banner]

“But what if it’s a big hoax and we create solid stools for nothing?”


Seriously, though!

This demand for peer-reviewed evidence in place of observation of known and basic mechanisms is out of control.


If you drop an ACME 100Kg anvil on your foot, you get a broken foot, and you can conclude "this fucked me, I won't do it again". But if you say "I suffered foot ecosystem collapse" and people ask you what that means and how you identified it, whinging about how people should stop asking stupid questions because all bad things are bad therefore they must be the same thing, is not helping anyone.


Except, you intentionally replied up here, and not down below,

where you’d have to reply to “well-understood and basic mechanisms” being ignored.

Including the ones we know inhibit a healthy diverse microbiome!

Sticking with your chosen example:

If you lean an anvil on your foot, and start suffering from poor circulation or discoloration of the foot, remove the anvil.


> therefore they must be the same thing

Also, this bit is a non-factual read (don’t put words in my mouth, mate, I choose them carefully).

An uncharitable, bad-faith interpretation at best.


With IBS-D every meal can result in a loose and unsatisfying stool output! Don't ask me how I know. GLP-1s actually make a hell of a difference for me.


Simple starches and sugars (the former being rapidly converted into the latter) are probably the most harmful ingredient once we exclude actual poisons. And they’re just as normalized with most food being primarily composed of them, even though normal people barely need them.


wow, i didn’t know this existed until now. thanks!


doesn’t that bacteria strain need to colonize your mouth somehow? how would that happen if we are constantly exposing our mouths to various foods, liquids, and dental products?

citing the discovery from 1987? synthesis of the strain in 2002, and then moving onto the product recommendation without going into the mechanisms that allow such a bacteria to persist after just one magical application feels very snake oil to me.

we can use metagenomics to test the rna and dna of our oral microbiome. (testing is somewhere around $200-400 a swab currently)

show me the data even with a low N value of test subjects that give a oral microbiome analysis weeks, months, and years out after just 1 application and you’ll have my curiosity, maybe my money.

also give recommendations about if and what habits and behaviors would wreck this expensive bacterium’s viability in our mouths.

* this is coming from a father whose tested their child’s poop with inhale every 4 weeks or so several times to debug a believed to be rare (but science doesn’t truly know) staphylococcus aureus & eczema issue

i’m skeptical but i’ll stay open minded

found this explanation on why they went the probiotic route rather than seek FDA approval. from their subreddit that https://x.com/yishan/status/1780131552615420189

> 1. Move forward with manufacturing and distributing this as a probiotic supplement > 2. Once a critical mass of biohackers and early adopters take this treatment, other third-party research can get involved

https://www.reddit.com/r/lanternbioworks/s/01haEdviDz


I'm skeptical as well but from the earlier linked faq (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/defying-cavity-lantern-biow...):

>BCS3-L1 has four main genetic modifications:

It produces a weak antibiotic, mutacin-1140, which kills competing oral bacteria.

It’s immune to mutacin-1140, so it doesn’t kill itself.

It metabolizes sugar through a different chemical pathway that ends in alcohol instead of lactic acid.

It lacks a peptide that its species usually uses to arrange gene transfers with other bacteria.


my next question would be what is the effect of mutacin-1140 on the gut microbiome.

I looked up mutacin—1140, found this 2018 study looking at the effect on staph and possibly positive persistence in the gut.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6256755/

> “Nisin and mutacin 1140 have potent activities (nanomolar or submicromolar activity) against well-known Gram-positive pathogens, including Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pneumoniae. Nisin has been used as a food preservative for more than 50 years without inducing significant resistance”

> “ Despite the short half-life of mutacin 1140 in blood, analogs of mutacin 1140 were demonstrated to have increased gastric stability and were effective in treating a Clostridium difficile infection in hamsters “

this very interesting to me.

we fought off a extreme overgrowth of staph aureus with a regiment of probiotics and bacillus subtillis (a bacterium found in dirt that is known to disrupt quorum of bacteria that create biofilms.

biofilms are a huge reason to floss and brush our teeth, it’s like a slime that protects and nourishes the bad bacteria on our teeth.

this bit from the sparse wikipedia was interesting. “Mutacin 1140 belongs to the epidermin subset of type Al lantibiotics.”

are there other bacterium in our oral/gut that produce these kind of compounds?


that said, if i floss, occasional use mouth wash, or drink a alcoholic beverage will this bomb the micro biome in my mouth making a one time dose magic cure a expensive maintenance cost?

Wouldn’t it be better to have a probiotic toothpaste?


I’m with you, repeating it is like low effort copy pasta when they should’ve put effort into backing up that claim.


Regular brushing at least once weekly. Husky owner here. 2 roombas 2 dysons


Genius! Why I didn’t think of this!


Text, images, video, all of it I can’t think of any form of data they don’t want to scoop up, other than noise and poisoned data


That could be part of his strategy no?


What is the problem breakdown by % in your eatimate?


He must mean lithium?


I guess it depends on your perspective. If you're Chinese, graphite is abundant and available as 98% of processing currently occurs in China. Lithium, not so much which is why it is Chinese firms leading development of sodium ion battery technology.

As with the rare earth minerals, the supply of graphite, cobalt and nickel is vulnerable hence the designation as critical minerals by Western Governments.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: