
The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease - montrose
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180308143102.htm
======
cyrusshepard
If anyone is interested in a way to treat E. gallinarum—and other potentially
pathogens—without antibiotics, you should look into phage therapy. Phages are
viruses that attack specific bacteria, have been used for decades, are
commercially available (even on Amazon) and are generally considered safe for
human consumption.

Granted, phage therapy typically targets gut pathogens, and in this study the
E. gallinarum had traveled to other parts of the body. But many people I have
talked to who use phage therapy have reported improved symptoms and in some
cases even reversal of autoimmune disease.

And yes, phages that you can buy today without a prescription target
Enterococcus bacteria, which includes E. gallinarum.

The gut is a wonderful, mysterious place that most of us neglect.

~~~
amelius
Sounds interesting, but how would you know which species to attack?

~~~
cyrusshepard
Most commercial phages in the US (can't speak for the rest of the world) are
comprised of these 4:

LH01 – Myoviridae LL5 – Siphoviridae T4D Myoviridae LL12 – Myoviridae

You can research all of these, but these 4 specifically target a specific but
broad range of potentially pathogenic bacteria, including E. Coli (though not
all E. Coli is bad) and other species. Generally if you take them together
they provide effective treatment against a broad range of inflammatory agents.

Disclaimer: Not a doctor, just someone who suffered decades of gut problems
and eventually healed himself.

~~~
amelius
Would these bacteria show up in a stool test? It would have my preference to
first test myself, with the benefits of not taking any therapies I don't need,
AND also for getting an objective measure of the effectiveness of the therapy.

By the way, I've read that phage therapy is big in Georgia:
[https://www.nature.com/news/phage-therapy-gets-
revitalized-1...](https://www.nature.com/news/phage-therapy-gets-
revitalized-1.15348)

~~~
cyrusshepard
To a degree. Also, depends on the service you use for testing. For example,
Ubiome will show your bacteria down the genus level (e.g. Enterococcus) but
not the species level (e.g. Enterococcus gallinarum)

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chiefalchemist
The gut is the new "great unknown." Understanding it takes a more holistic
approach. Western medicine / science is typically not very holistic-centric.

It's not going to surprise me if many of the cures / remedies offered by "non
traditional medicine" (read: lessons from human history) little by litte get
more credit for their worthiness.

~~~
chroem-
This is a very dangerous way of thinking. I can think of at least five people
in my social network who have died as a direct result of seeking naturopathic
medicine for their serious illnesses instead of proper medical care. Please do
not encourage more people to do this.

~~~
Xeoncross
I can think of 250,000 people in the United States alone who died last year
because they sought proper medical care but died because of medical mistakes
and bad prescriptions. In addition there were those that were harmed, but not
fatally (of whom I know several).

[https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_su...](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_suggests_medical_errors_now_third_leading_cause_of_death_in_the_us)

~~~
Retric
That's a very misleading statistic, many of these people might have lived with
the best possible care but would have still died without treatment. Heathy
people rarely seek major surgery for example.

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eloff
My mom has Hashimoto’s which she's managed successfully for years using a low
daily dosage of doxycycline. This suggests a mechanism for why that seems to
work for her.

~~~
fest
Did her endocrinologist prescribe her antibiotic?

I'm asking this because I have Hashimoto's myself and none of the
endocrinologists I've seen recommended anything else besides levothyroxine.

~~~
eloff
No, she and my dad just did their own research online and gave it a try. Seems
to have worked out really well for her. Her goiter shrank and she had to
reduce her thyroid meds.

Low dose doxycycline seems who tolerated, and has an interesting side effect
of reducing inflammation to near zero in the body (CRP levels of actually
zero). Given the role of inflammation in heart disease, that might be helpful
for longevity too.

There's actually a drug, periostat that's prescribed in this way for oral
health. It's 20mg doxycycline taken daily long term. There are studies on it
available online.

~~~
throwaway5752
This is why we have drug resistant bacteria, in a nutshell. Glad your mother's
health is better, but if even a small number of people started following this
regimen, it would be come useless in a relatively small number of years.

edit: I would love it if _just one person_ could tell me how I'm wrong instead
of downvoting. Long term low dose antibiotic treatment (doxy is a
tetracycline) is how this happens. If you look up how I'm wrong before
downvoting, I suspect you will end up not doing so, and perhaps learn
something new.

~~~
mrfusion
I Was going to downvote but I’ll respond instead.

These people have legimate medical needs for this antibiotic so this isn’t a
case where we’d want to withhold it.

We’re better off spending our resources discovering new antibiotics instead of
neggling who’s deserving of what.

~~~
throwaway5752
Hashimoto's is awful, but it can also be treated with an oral form of the
thyroid hormones to restore appropriate levels (levothyroxine as the original
poster mentioned earlier). I believe this is completely effective (I don't
know if the underlying condition still causes an uncomfortable/visible
goiter).

It's generally not fatal when treated. I'm sure you know that bacteria don't
have to do traditional reproduction to exchange genetic material so they can
pass along traits like antibiotic resistance very rapidly. It can also spread
between different species of bacteria (see plasmids, bacterial
conjugation/transformation).

So this is why I'm against using antibiotics for non-life saving applications,
generally. You have widely drug resistant staph (eg, MRSA), e. coli,
chlamydia, tuberculosis (XDR TB), et al. causing massive problems in
healthcare systems across the world and _killing_ quite a few people.

I am not sure if you know this, but given the absence of the selection
pressure, bacterial populations can lose drug resistance. It has higher
ongoing metabolic requirements to have that trait, and is a evolutionary
disadvantage. Also, I don't know if you appreciate the difficulty to find new
antibiotics (particularly wide-spectrum and low side-effects/toxicity). I
would encourage you to research that topic carefully because it's a subject
with a lot of poor information written about it.

Finally, I will underscore that I took my own advice, and found multiple
papers hosted by the NIH about emergence of drug resistance in patients using
very low dose doxy (not in Hashimoto's, but rosacea, where its non-antibiotic
properties are also useful, though I'm not sure it's the same mechanism). So I
was wrong, it seems. I learned something new in the process of researching my
response.

~~~
fest
Hashimoto's relatively easy to live with (at least, compared to other
autoimmune conditions). If properly medicated with replacement hormones, no
observable change in life expectancy. If goiter forms (which is a complication
of undiagnosed/under-treated Hashimoto's), it's solvable by surgery.

------
andreygrehov
See the paper here: [https://sci-
hub.tw/downloads/2c98/10.1126@science.aar7201.pd...](https://sci-
hub.tw/downloads/2c98/10.1126@science.aar7201.pdf)

------
DataWorker
Is the suggestion that this particular bacteria is behind all forms of
systemic lupus or merely that this bacteria can cause such a response? Thats
an important difference.

~~~
vanderZwan
Similarly, this headline makes it sound like _all_ autoimmune diseases stem
from gut bacteria. That sounds unlikely.

~~~
code_duck
Having one autoimmune disease increases the likelihood that you have or will
develop another one. They also have cross-reactivity on tests.

For instance, false positives on the TTG/IGA for celiac are 2% for healthy
patients, but rise to 20% for subjects with type 1 diabetes.

Celiac patients have a drastically higher rate of Hashimoto’s, autoimmune
thyroid disease:
[https://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/718160?keywords=ce...](https://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/718160?keywords=celiac-
disease-Hashimotos-thyroiditis-link) and also the liver disease cited in the
article: [https://www.verywell.com/celiac-disease-and-liver-
diseases-5...](https://www.verywell.com/celiac-disease-and-liver-
diseases-562618)

Celiac patients also suffer higher rates of MS:
[https://multiplesclerosisnewstoday.com/2015/05/14/celiac-
dis...](https://multiplesclerosisnewstoday.com/2015/05/14/celiac-disease-
found-linked-increased-risk-multiple-sclerosis-nerve-damage/) MS doesn’t seem
gut related on the surface, but you can get almost identical neurological
symptoms from celiac. I know because this is what drinking beer does to me.

So, the roots of all of these diseases could definitely be related.

~~~
vanderZwan
> _So, the roots of all of these diseases could definitely be related._

Well, yes, but by definition they already have one connection at the root:
_the immune system_. So increased comorbidity could also be explained by
having a kind of immune system that fundamentally is more likely to develop
auto-immune diseases.

------
sound1
I went to an ayurvedic doctor (in India, my friend insisted) and he said the
exact same thing. He even said all allergy problems arise because of issuees
in the digestive tract. At the time I thought he was just saying it but who
knows there might be some truth in what he said.

~~~
paulie_a
> ayurvedic doctor

So not a real doctor

~~~
dang
Please don't do this here, just because someone mentioned something like that.
It only leads to predictable places.

~~~
paulie_a
I don't mind being downed for an unpopular opinion, but calling out fake
doctors should not be a reason to get flagged... And yes they are fake
doctors.

~~~
dang
Maybe so, but these discussions are all the same and always turn uncivil, so
they're off topic here. There are lots of other places on the internet to
argue about them.

~~~
bsder
Then please flag the original posting as well.

Allowing people to promulgate pseudoscience without following up with a strong
counter-response is how we wound up with anti-vaxxers.

------
neom
As someone with vitiligo, wonder if there is something similar in us.

------
aviv
Another reason why water fasting is highly effective at curing many diseases.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _water fasting is highly effective at curing many diseases_

Has this been demonstrated?

~~~
asdf1234tx
"...it can be argued that caloric restriction ... has the potential to
accelerate the healing process..."

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25881054](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25881054)

"...fasting ... has the potential to differentially protect normal and cancer
cells against chemotherapy..."

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2815756/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2815756/)

"...Autophagy is sometimes referred to as cellular “cleansing”, and our
observations provide an attractive neuronal parallel to the organismal
benefits that, historically, are perceived to derive from fasting."

"...short-term food restriction induces a dramatic upregulation of autophagy
in cortical and Purkinje neurons. To our knowledge, this is the first
demonstration that food restriction leads to in vivo neuronal autophagy."

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3106288/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3106288/)

~~~
aviv
The day Big Pharma finds a way to profit from patients not consuming anything
but water for 10 to 40 days and getting rid of diseases that used to require
lifelong drug regimen, the research flood gates will open. But ain't gonna
happen in my lifetime. There's no money in fasting, and no one can patent it.

~~~
krageon
Regardless of whether or not this is true (and really it seems to me to be a
bit more malicious than large groups of people are consistently capable of),
this isn't a super useful way of looking at it. Rather than speculate on why
things are the way they are (especially if in this case it's pretty much
unsolvable without really big changes), shouldn't we look to solve the
problems this is causing (which by and large involves "merely" collecting
large amounts of data, which is much less difficult and much more attainable
in the short term)?

------
asdf1234tx
I'm no expert, but here's the sequence (in reverse order) as I see it (for
now): bad-things-happening <<< crazed-immune-system <<< crazed-gut-bacteria
<<< 1st-world-bad-living

Anything that treats "bad things happening", or "crazed immune system", or
"crazed gut bacteria", will be a bandaid.

I think our first world lifestyles create a perfect storm of bad living that
undermines the foundations of a healthy human being from a multitude of
vectors. Not enough sunlight, not enough unprocessed fresh foods, not enough
exercise, not enough fresh air, long term consumption and exposure to
compounds and chemicals that work against your bodies natural processes.

A friend of mine had to go every other month to sit in a chair for 4 hours at
a clinic to receive an IV drip that included medication to squash his immune
system. Why? Because his immune system was attacking every joint in his body.
He could not move without extreme pain without the treatment. Eventually he
stopped eating the cheapest and most processed of garbage food, started
exercising every day, gave up alcohol and diet sodas, and lost 75lbs. He found
that he no longer needed the medication after about a year of turning his life
around...

~~~
zilian
I know it's very tempting to blame everything to our "1st world bad living",
but please do not spread misinformation like this about autoimmune diseases. I
am 27, always ate healthy and was very active, yet I started developing
ankylosing spondylytis 3 years ago, a very painful AI disease which attacks
your articulations.

And you know what ? We know that many Pharaohs of ancient Egypt had it too,
including Ramses II :
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12548434](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12548434)

So long for the 1st-world, industrialized society as the root of all evils...

Moreover, sounds like your friend was on biologics. Sure, losing 75pds will
help lowering the inflammation and pressure on articulations anyway. But
there's NO evidence it's not just a pause in flares, sorry for your friend. I
met many people with AI diseases and to date have met no one who can prove he
"healed" with a change in diet. Happy to discuss about it in PM if some read
that comment !

~~~
rosegold
A recent study indicates clinical evidence for remission through diet in IBD:

"Clinical remission was achieved by week 6 by 11/15 (73%) of study
participants, and all 11 maintained clinical remission during the maintenance
phase of the study."

Konijeti, Gauree Gupta et al. “Efficacy of the Autoimmune Protocol Diet for
Inflammatory Bowel Disease.” Inflammatory bowel diseases 23.11 (2017):
2054–2060. PMC. Web. 9 Apr. 2018.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5647120/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5647120/)

~~~
55555
That's really great, but I did that protocol strictly for 3 years straight and
it never worked for me. (I continued it because it had a good effect on my
sinuses, but not my lymphocytic colitis).

