
Exercise Alters Our Microbiome - fillskills
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/well/move/exercise-microbiome-health-weight-gut-bacteria.html
======
sillysaurus3
I dropped all forms of sugar and corn syrup a few months ago. I was never a
health nut. Quite the opposite.

It's incredible how much your physiology alters just from that. Water tastes
good now. I used to drink water with crystal light, because it was so bland.

Shed 20lbs without even exercising.

I eat bananas, apples, peanut butter and chicken. Learned to cook a few
things. You sort of have to, if you want to avoid sugar and corn syrup.

Any ingredients with dex-, wheat, corn starch, -ose, dairy, added sweetener,
agave, artificial sweeteners, etc – you can drop it, if you try. No pasta, no
bread. No white potatoes.

I wonder how much the input to our body affects us vs exercise? It seems
substantial.

And it's crazy how much more you have to spend on food just to make it work.
Easily 2x or 3x.

EDIT: To clarify, the interesting part is that I'm never hungry. I eat as many
bananas and apples as I want. When I want some variety, my go-to is Nathan's
hotdogs with no additives (no dextrose/corn starch), or throwing coconut milk
into chicken with spices and garlic. For whatever reason, the weight keeps
coming off, for months now.

Grain and dairy seem worth avoiding. I don't know why.

FWIW I drank diet soda before this, but it was easy to eat sugar: chocolate
covered pretzels were my feel-good food. It's easy to dupe yourself into
thinking you're eating healthy by doing one thing in one area, but totally the
wrong thing in a different area but "in moderation." My only solution was
quitting it cold turkey.

~~~
hycaria
I don't get why you would exclude potatoes and eat bananas. They are very very
similar foods.

Everything that is flour based is refined, lacks fiber etc so I get the pasta
and bread exclusion, but the potatoes one makes no sense imo.

Overall in this thread, once again americans discover that they eat shit and
simply cooking meals yourself from scratch (with limited fat of course) with
no treats between meals makes you lose weight. For Europeans, the whole USA
deal with food is really laughable. An american friend (largely overweight of
course) was taking a starbucks with cream extrasugar and what not everyday. He
was astonished when we said that it was really high on calories (and has
stopped since). What is wrong that most americans (even educated ones) seem to
have no idea of what an healthy diet is ?

~~~
tudorw
Is nutrition and cooking / domestic skills part of the American school
curriculum or widely taught ?

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Not really. That's one of those things they've been dropping from the
curriculum. Where it is taught, half the time it isn't mandatory and is often
unhelpful.

I personally had 9 weeks of combined sewing and cooking, that really taught me
nothing. (My sister got a lowered grade for not following the recipe exactly).
I was lucky - I had already been cooking for a few years by then because I
liked it. Had that been my only introduction to cooking, though, I'd not be
very functional as a new adult.

My "financial" education happened in 8th grade - age 13, when you can't rent
an apartment until 18 most times. This consisted of a car salesman teaching us
about loans and interest and tax forms... giving us extra credit if our
parents looked at a car. Even more credit if they bought one.

That said, most high schools have some sort of child development classes as an
optional class. If you are interested in stem classes or otherwise on a
college-bound path, you might not be offered such classes or be able to fit
them into your class schedule. High school cooking, if even offered, generally
focused on job placement where I lived.

~~~
logfromblammo
About the only thing I learned in the cooking part of my class in 8th grade--
which had in a prior generation been called "home ec" and "shop" but was now
"life skills" and "industrial arts"\--was that everything I made myself tasted
better than anything that came out of the school cafeteria's kitchen.

The part about putting the fork on the left and the knife (blade facing the
plate) and spoon on the right was useless filler. When they added in salad
forks and dessert spoons, I really had to wonder how many rich people just got
tired of screaming at their servants for putting the soup spoon where the
dinner spoon should go. A _practical_ class would have graded us on our use of
chopsticks, instead of the correct placement of the asparagus-tickler for a
15-course banquet.

They never taught us about peanut-butter burritos that require no cooking,
water, or refrigeration--great for when you have no utilities turned on. They
never mentioned the magical amino-acid balance of beans-rice-corn or ordinary
potato, for when you can't afford actual meat. They certainly didn't say
anything about the locked trash containers behind the grocery store or
haggling over the coupon policy. They didn't go into any detail about how the
remains of one meal can be used to stretch the next. That would have been
useful stuff to learn for the bottom economic quintile we were to be dumped
into after high-school graduation.

My own kids don't even have it as an elective. Future food comes from a box or
a vending machine. I suspect that the last master chefs will be programming
DLC modules for all the auto-cook robots.

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dvt
This is only tangentially related, but I've been practicing intermittent
fasting for the past year, and I _cannot recommend it enough_ \-- it honestly
changed my life. I feel better, I sleep more regularly, I have more energy,
and my mind is more alert. I only eat from 12PM to 8PM. IF is also supposed to
have an impact on your microbiome, reduce inflammation, and encourage
autophagy (especially in the brain).

PS: Please talk to your doctor before you make any major dietary changes. I'm
just some guy on the internet. And I'm most definitely not a doctor.

~~~
sharmi
As a counterexample, I tried to fast from 8PM to 11PM and it triggered a
starvation response in me and 4 days in, it made binge on what ever I set my
eyes on. I do a bulk of moving around in the morning. So maybe I should do it
in the evening, may be like a 7AM to 5PM. I am a woman. So the physiological
differences may also come into play. I dunno.

I am just adding this comment because, invariably articles on food & health
results in comments about intermittent fasting with glowing reviews. It really
does marvels for some/many. There are also cases like me for whom it does
seems to hurt. Maybe I am approaching it wrong. Just adding my anecdote for a
balanced view.

~~~
DrScump

      I tried to fast from 8PM to 11PM
    

I hope you meant 11 _AM_.

~~~
sharmi
Yes.

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basicplus2
TLDR

The scientists found that the animals [mice] with gut bugs from the runners
were better able to resist and heal tissue damage and tamp down inflammation
than those whose microbes had come from sedentary mice.

...recruiting 32 men and women who did not exercise. About half were obese and
the rest of normal weight.

they had the men and women begin supervised workouts, during which their
efforts increased over time from about 30 minutes of easy walking or cycling
to about an hour of vigorous jogging or pedaling three times per week.

The subsequent analysis showed that the volunteers’ gut bugs had changed
throughout the experiment,

Most of these changes were not shared from one person to the next. Everyone’s
gut responded uniquely to exercise.

But there were some similarities, the researchers found. In particular, they
noted widespread increases in certain microbes that can help to produce
substances called short-chain fatty acids... believed to aid in reducing
inflammation in the gut and the rest of the body.

They also work to fight insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes, and
otherwise bolster our metabolisms.

------
teekno
I was shocked to read that the gut microbiome's gene set is about 150 times
larger than the human gene complement [1]. I don't know a ton about
microbiology, but it seems like that wouldn't drastically increase the time to
sequence these microbes since we are talking about total set size, not the
size of individual genomes? There is still so much to learn from the human
genome alone - I fully expect many of our next great medical advances will
come from studying these gut flora.

Hopefully that will also bring a little more science to the probiotics
industry :)

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3779803/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3779803/)

~~~
tstactplsignore
It's a bit of a tricky comparison. Bacterial genomes are jam-packed full of
protein-coding genes, while human genomes have genes spread out between much
larger regions of both "junk" (viral elements, pseudogenes, and repetitive
elements) and regulatory regions.

A human genome is 3 billion base pairs, and a bacterial genome is ~3 million
base pairs. Considering there are probably 100-1000 bacterial species of
clinical / gut ecological importance in a person's gut, it happens to sort of
work out that it takes roughly the same amount of sequencing to sequence your
gut microbiome as it does your genome.

Studies like this one do not do that. They only sequence marker genes which
describe which bacteria are there (however, this process doesn't include all
bacteria, doesn't tell you what those bacteria do, or what their small
differences are). It's like a census where you just ask for people's last
names.

That being said, after reading I think this was a nice little study. It had a
small sample size but pretty clear effects that fit in with a lot of priors
that we already have about the gut with regards to butyrate production by
specific species.

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koolhead17
The course on Coursera about Microbiome
([https://www.coursera.org/learn/microbiome](https://www.coursera.org/learn/microbiome))
has been extremely helpful for me in understanding gut bacteria and
Microbiome.

Hope it helps.

------
lwansbrough
I have pretty mild IBS symptoms, but I concur - exercising at the very least
has helped regulate my gut. At least to the extent that I can live a normal
life without having to be constantly aware of the nearest bathroom.

Can’t recommend regular exercise enough to those experiencing similar issues.
Running would be my recommendation. I wonder if the rhythm of exercise is
partially responsible.

~~~
dcx
Can I ask for more details on how you are exercising - frequency, duration,
any special tips? I have mild IBS-D but find that running sometimes seems to
exacerbate my symptoms. I've found research pointing both ways on this.

~~~
lwansbrough
Every other day approximately. Not too much running - 15 mins maybe. Then an
hour of weight training.

The most important thing has been regulation. I stay away from foods I’ve
recognized as being triggers. I was taking probiotics for a while. I was
stressed, anxious. All contributing factors. Learning control has been a key
for me.

~~~
dcx
Very interesting, thank you! For a while I was running in the 30-60 minute
range and my gut was getting more and more irritable over time. Your
experience lines up with the research I found - that intense, prolonged or
overly frequent exercise can worsen leaky gut / intestinal permeability
symptoms, but regular exercise at a relatively low intensity may improve it.
This makes me want to try reintroducing running into my routine.

Also very interesting that weight training doesn't trigger any symptoms. Can I
ask - how hard do you push during weight training? Are you on a program like
StrongLifts 5x5? I was running and then doing weights back-to-back and stopped
both after I realised it was making things worse.

I have the same experience as you in terms of biggest improvements - spotting
and cutting out trigger foods has been a huge help. I miss a lot of foods, but
I like having a stable gut much more than I miss the foods...

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QasimK
I stopped reading as soon as I saw:

> They began by recruiting 32 men and women who did not exercise.

This is not worth reporting - certainly not in the matter-of-fact manner that
they did. It is far far more likely there is nothing worth seeing here.

I wish I had the resources on hand to explain why I believe this. It relates
to p-hacking and finding results that just fade away with more in-depth
investigations.

32 doesn’t mean the criteria for something that should be reported to the
general public. Investigated further? Sure.

~~~
dcdanko
Why? 32 is a big for a human study.

They recruited 32 people that didn't exercise, they didn't choose them after
they already had the data.

~~~
QasimK
The evidence required for these kinds of studies is far greater than it might
initially seem. The sheer number of other variables (environmental factors)
makes it very easy to assign causal relationships incorrectly. I mean to say
that I’m willing to bet most individual studies involving “32” participants
(or on that ballpark) are basically wrong. By individual studies I mean those
where the evidence for the phenomena is _almost_ just that study.

Some anecdotal evidence (lacking being able to share the resources that I’ve
read in the past) is the “science” in (and media reporting of) the fields of
nutrition, psychology, sociology and similar fields where the environment is
impossible to fully control. They seems half-baked (or outright contradictory)
because the media reports on findings that don’t have very strong evidence
behind them (need further research) while _making it seem like_ it is an
established fact.

------
provost
Has anyone done research on the probiotic industry? Are there brands that are
considered safer, better, than the rest?

I was reading about the vitamin pill industry, and that made me stare
questionably at the probiotic bottle my wife buys -- where does it come from
and is it safe? Two questions I have no answers for.

~~~
iceman7733
I had a physician recommend VSL3 (the powder form). I believe you can buy it
w/o a prescription, and it's available at most Costcos. My understanding is
the powder is more bio-available than any pill form.

~~~
provost
Thanks!

------
nyc111
Title: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome The first sentence of the article:
Exercise _may_ change the composition and activity of the trillions of
microbes in our guts...

Kind of a title bait.

Also, if you measure your microbiome every day you would see that it varies
widely from day to day. So these results based on one measurement before the
experiment and one measurement after are not reliable.

~~~
agumonkey
what are other MB influencing factors ?

mood ?

circadian rhythms ?

diet ?

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Oh, is this going to be like "X changes your brain"? Where it turns out that
doing _literally anything_ changes your brain because it's designed to
optimize against absolutely any environment.

~~~
dcdanko
Even the composition of your microbiome itself can alter your brain chemistry
(actually, it's usually called the gut brain axis).

The study here used fecal transplant from lean to obese mice as well as a less
invasive test; so it really does seems like a meaningful distinction.

~~~
agumonkey
backfeednack

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starjockey
Are they doing the exercises outside?Maybe they are measuring the effects of
normalized vitamin D3 levels...

I smell a great purge in healthy articles.Myself im going to stick to my guns
and common sense [http://www.unz.com/jthompson/diet-is-iq-
test/](http://www.unz.com/jthompson/diet-is-iq-test/)

~~~
lsc
You used 'vitamin D3 levels' and 'just use common sense' in the same post. You
have no way of knowing if vitamin D3 makes any difference at all without
delving into scientific literature and statistics.

~~~
starjockey
You know im just a programmer,right? [http://www.timeforwellness.org/blog-
view/vitamin-d-improves-...](http://www.timeforwellness.org/blog-view/vitamin-
d-improves-gut-bacteria-566)

~~~
lsc
I'm not saying you are wrong; I personally believe vitamin D3 is important,
too. (I'm also not a medical professional)

I'm just saying that the importance of vitamin D3 is not something that can be
figured out by common sense; it's the sort of thing that requires a double-
blind study.

~~~
draugadrotten
The importance of vitamin D3 can also be seen in the Somalia diaspora in
Nordic regions. The veiled Somali women, with their dark skin, burka clothing
and home-dwelling habits, have very low vitamin D levels, leading to health
issues in themselves and leading to autism spectrum disorders in their
offspring.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4396835/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4396835/)
[https://www.somalispot.com/threads/new-research-somali-
immig...](https://www.somalispot.com/threads/new-research-somali-immigrants-
in-sweden-suffering-from-severe-vitamin-d-deficiency.32980/)
[https://www.vitamindcouncil.org/new-research-somali-
immigran...](https://www.vitamindcouncil.org/new-research-somali-immigrants-
in-sweden-suffering-from-severe-vitamin-d-deficiency-during-pregnancy/)
[https://www.gnc.gu.se/digitalAssets/1349/1349916_s----
f-seve...](https://www.gnc.gu.se/digitalAssets/1349/1349916_s----f-severe-
vitamin-d-deficiency-.pdf)

~~~
lsc
Yes, I understand that there is some scientific evidence that D3 is important.
I'm not contesting that evidence.

My point is that scientific evidence and "common sense" are very different
sorts of things; in common use, "common sense" means something that is
observable without education or technical training.

In general, I think "common sense" is less useful that the knowledge you can
gain through dedicated work of educated scientists and statisticians.

