The same promise was held out for Ulcerative Colitis / Crohns. Composition of the gut biome clearly plays a role in both illnesses. But the search for small molecule drugs building on this observation seems to have been fruitless. That might be because it's not the presence of a particular molecule in bacterial poop that's influencing the disease but something about the biome as a whole. More positively, it might also be that the tools available at the start of that search were nothing like as good as those we have now as interest in the brain / biome link grows. I tend to think it unlikely that small molecules for effective treatment of anything much will result from this but I've no doubt a great deal of useful and important things will be learned in the process. I'd love to be wrong.
> the search for small molecule drugs building on this observation seems to have been fruitless
I imagine this is such a perfect use case for large-scale data analytics. Maybe with the next (or n+2 or n+10) generation of wearables we may be able to track some of the macro effects of diet, exercise, air quality, sleep, etc. at such a big scale that we can determine how individual factors can affect mood and behaviour.
Ignoring the privacy and political concerns aside, it seems like such a cool problem space.
One of the challenges faced in the early days was simply to get the bacteria to reproduce. It’s not clear for any given bacteria what substrate and food source is useful. Not being able to do that was an obstacle to the analytics since much of the basic data couldn’t be developed. It seems we are better at that now.
It could indeed be the interaction of two (2) complex, mutually interacting feedback loops. Definitely not a simple reductive result. But well within that complexity theory can address.
I definately react mentally to things happening in my gut. I suffer from IBS and the only times I have ever had dark moods in my adult live was during IBS episodes.
I've even gone to the ER once for something I couldn't describe as pain but rather as "intense horror" which seemed to just confuse them.
Intense horror is referred to as "looming/impending fears of doom/dread" in medicine.. could be worth you checking out kidneys/adrenals (there’s a rare benign tumour that can grow on our adrenals called pheochromocytoma - that legit functions as a provider of intense horror kidding aside it can either over or under produce certain hormones mainly the ones that control fight or flight if I remember correctly so cortisol and epinephrine which is adrenaline’s new name). Again, it’s super rare BUT could be worth investigating if your IBS is actually something related to your endocrine system, so hormonal / pituitary-related.
pheo crisis would have BP and pulse through the roof as well (and probably lots of other things, flushing, HR, respiration, etc), and the first thing done in ER triage is vitals.
It can be potentially an allergy also, also can induce impending doom, and BP variation could be within the norm, and even sometimes hypertensive instead of hypotension.
What you shared is quite interesting. But looming/impending fears of doom/dread is one of the tell-tale symptoms of anxiety (which is more plausible than a rare ailment for how common anxiety is. Anxiety also often has physical symptoms).
I have Crohn's disease and I get extremely sharp depressive symptoms up to a week before a flare up. The longer the lead time the worse the flare up. It's rather interesting to have depression re-framed as a symptom rather than as a disease. It does make me wonder if in the future we'll be looking at the treatment of depression today like we do at the treatment of fever with leaches.
It's likely the inflammation that's causing the depression rather than any particular molecule produced by a bacterium though. I have the same experience with UC to the extent that taking steroids causes almost immediate relief of the depressive symptoms and I relapse when I taper. In my last flare, I tried to track depressive symptoms against CRP levels in my blood but being depressed, lost interest... Joking aside, I also wasn't getting the blood tests with sufficient frequency for it to be useful. "The Inflamed Mind" by Edward Bullamore is a good read on the subject.
How can you be sure the steroids themselves aren't causing the mood change? I also have UC and steroids make me noticeably, behaviorally manic. I don't think the mania is due to the absence of inflammation.
I can't. But there's good evidence that inflammation is linked with depression and steroids unquestionably reduce inflammation. They may well have further effects. They are certainly not something I want to take consistently.
I don't have IBS, but I have noticed that I feel a strong, deep sense of anxiety when my pipes are backed up, and it instantly goes away when I go number 2.
If you’re backed up sort of often you should beware of diverticulitis. It occurs in younger and younger people today. It’s not too strange to see a person in their early 30’s having a partial colectomy (or worse) nowadays.
I have this as well. The gloom and doom kicks in about a day or two before the symptoms do. I take a strict regimen of fiber and probiotics to keep it at bay.
PHGG, GOS and lactulose (if you don't have SIBO) are relatively good prebiotics in my experience. However, the type of prebiotics you use should be tied to what's going on in your microbiome. Some common ones, such as Inulin, can feed both good and bad bacteria (and good bacteria become bad if they overgrow).
Depends on which "creature" you consider has free will.
I think it confirms a sci-fi theory that I have: if you want to "upload" a human to a computer, it's not enough to copy the brain. You basically have to copy and simulate the whole body.
This is the big reveal of the Keanu Reeves/Thomas Middleditch (no, that's really the cast) movie "Replicas". I am deliberately spoiling it to save anyone else the pain of watching it.
My best-case scenario is that the movie does not exist, and my memories of watching it are simply my brain's dying hallucinations, patching together memories of The Matrix, Johnny Mnemonic When I Was 13, and Silicon Valley Seasons 1-3.
I think I've started watching this movie a few times only to realize not very far into the film that it was so bad I blocked out the memory of watching it.
Simulating the entire organism would likely predict behaviors but would not qualify as an "upload" as the original copy still exists in reality. There is no transfer of awareness
The parent comment felt true to me. While not author of the parent comment I would like to explain why and how it feels true.
I've suffered clinical depression so am quite familiar with strong mood swings. It's never been bad enough that I would be hospitalized or anything. But some of the moods have been really bad. Had I followed my worst "gut feels" I would likley be alchoholic, divorced, unemployed and homeless.
So I have parts of me sending these literally gut wrenching emotions that direct me to lash out, do stupid things - anything for the make the immediate psychic pain to stop.
And at that point I have the option to either follow these feelings, or say no. I will do this other thing instead which I really hate doing right now but I know will make me feel better in a while. I would characterize this as an example of free will in action.
I cannot control these emotions. But I can choose how to react to them. And I can choose behaviours that lead to better outcomes (exercise, sleep, etc) even though I don't find them emotionally rewarding (except after the fact when I notice a better mood, being happier in my body).
The higher control is of course still some statistical or deterministic outcome of my current neurological state.
But I am 100% I am at least not directly driven by my strongest gut feelings as far as I perceive them.
I have a question for you. When you are in bad mood does it go away with distraction? i.e. say some loud boom happened and you are distracted to see what happened and forgot about "bad mood" and after some time it comes back or is it like physical pain where its persistent and distraction won't do anything to it?
Sometimes intuition works much better than analytic thought. It hits you first something feels right - or wrong - and only later you are able to give some reason to this feeling. If you can, that is.
Mood swings are really nasty in the sense they degrade ones trust in the negative "gut feelings" which generally may give beneficial signals.
I'm thinking kind of the opposite. I think control is real, and most definitely can be trained. And free will is something that can be an aspiration, but definitely out of reach for most, sort of like enlightenment or nirvana.
Unlike consciousness, I've not seen any compelling argument or experiment demonstrating that we actually have free will. Are you aware of any that I'm missing?
I would say it isn't because you certainly can change the degree of it. One can develop ability and habit to observe and control their mood and behaviour in some significant extent. A thing has to exist to be changeable.
How about Fusarium molds which are present in many foods like nuts, grains, coffee and chocolate? These Fusarium molds produce zearalenone, a potent estrogen mimetic which was linked to homosexual behavior and infertility in farm animals that ate Fusarium infected grains[1]. These molds can infect and become persistent in humans[2]. Sure, it's extremely controversial subject matter to even suggest this linkage, but I'll take the downvotes.
Zearalenone is a known mycotoxin that is routinely screened for in food production, so the exposure risk for people who consume commercially produced grains is minimal. Additionally although the toxin is heat stable, the fungal spores if present are destroyed by cooking.
So you’d have to consume non-heat-treated raw infected grains, and ignore the other symptoms of mycotoxin poisoning, as it’s not the only toxin Fusarium moulds produce.
Fusarium is a regular component of the gut microbiome according to the study below, especially and overwhelmingly in, I kid you not, vegetarians!!! I'd imagine the raw food trend in vegetarianism would exacerbate this. I did not expect that! This rabbit hole goes extremely deep! If it gets established in the gut microbiome, it would be generating regular small amounts of zearalenone and people so infected would not experience full blown mycotoxin poisoning like say an immunocompromised person.
"Finally, Suhr and colleagues examined 16 [fecal] samples from 15 vegetarians, while Hallen-Adams et al. used the same methodology in the same laboratory to isolate and sequence fungal DNA from 69 samples from 45 people on a conventional Western diet.22,23 The distribution of fungi differed considerably between the 2 groups (Table 2). Plant pathogenic Fusarium was detected in all but 2 samples from vegetarians (14 samples; 88%), while it was only detected in 2 samples from participants on conventional diets (3%). Malassezia and (presumed) foodborne Penicillium and Aspergillus were also present in more than 50% of vegetarian samples but much rarer in conventional diet samples. "
Very interesting! Now would it have the same effect in humans? Would be interesting.
I see no reason to downvote this... weren't LGBTQ people arguing for the longest time that there is a biological causation? They may have finally found it, though it is not genetic like they hoped for. Either way it is interesting.
Unfortunately it's not all too uncommon these days to simply assume (project?) bigotry and treat innocent people like crap over that assumption.
It's only studied in rats, so we basically don't know. I cannot access the original paper so I can't discern exactly how much fungus these rats were fed. Given what usually happens with such papers, it's probably an extreme amount. I wouldn't put too much credence into it.
The lowering of testosterone in the average male due to environmental and other factors definitely seems to correlate with a rise in the amount of LGBTQ. Of course society accepting them more and allowing them to come out is a big part too.
No doubt that eating clean, working out, etc seem to make you feel more masculine as a guy.
The spurious "I'm just asking questions..." style rhetoric and a link to an embarrassing study leaves me unsure why this is the top comment on an article about gut microbiome?
The first study, the one which _narrator_ attempts to use to 'suggest ... linkage', between this fungus and 'homosexual behaviour' seems embarrassingly unworthy of being brought to people's attention. Is this comment intentionally made in bad faith?
The linked abstract fails to acknowledge the study covered 12 male and 8 female rabbits, or let on that the article itself is roughly a page and a half of prose nearly completely devoid of data and analysis.
Your SageHub link only provides the abstract, but does say two of the authors only ever authored one other article, which they again share, and the third author has only ever authored this one article.
Google Scholar[0] has both a link to the article[1] which is from 1987(!) and labels it as having only 3(!) citations.
Of the 3 citations, two are in German and so I am unable to speak on their contents, but each only have 1(!) subsequent citation.
The third[2] has 29 citations, which is a 300 page survey of "Advances in Rabbit Sciences", and only briefly references the effects of infertility on the female rabbits, completely ignoring the 'homesexuality linkage' claims, and uses the very soft language of 'possibly':
> Feeding female rabbits with mycelium from
Fusarium roseum produces infertility, possibly due
to contamination with the mycotoxin zearalenon,
which has effects similar to those of estrogen
(Nilsson et al., 1987).
This comes with the assumption that oestrogen variations in humans will affect their sexuality. Being very active in the international trans community, I have witnessed humans with a wide array of oestrogens level and testosterone level.
For example, I know of trans women who maintain a pregnancy level of oestradiol, others who maintain themselves at post menopausal levels and some who do not take oestradiol at all.
Having an analytic mind and access to a huge population, I am always on the lookout for patterns. This is anecdotal but I have not noticed any pattern or relationship between sex hormone level and sexuality.
What I did notice is a relationship between libido and sex hormone levels. To me, that's what this study noticed in animals. I doubt this applies in humans. Contrary to animals, having a high libido will not mean that you will start sexual intercourse with every single mammal you can reach. There is a difference between animals having same sex intercourse and homosexuality in humans.
The rate of homosexuality is relatively constant with time and location. I doubt the same is true for that specific fungus. The gay uncle hypothesis is more compelling.
"Biological warfare
Mass casualties occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s when Fusarium-contaminated wheat flour was baked into bread, causing alimentary toxic aleukia with a 60% mortality rate. Symptoms began with abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting, and prostration, and within days, fever, chills, myalgias and bone marrow depression with granulocytopenia and secondary sepsis occurred. Further symptoms included pharyngeal or laryngeal ulceration and diffuse bleeding into the skin (petechiae and ecchymoses), melena, bloody diarrhea, hematuria, hematemesis, epistaxis, vaginal bleeding, pancytopenia and gastrointestinal ulceration. Fusarium sporotrichoides contamination was found in affected grain in 1932, spurring research for medical purposes and for use in biological warfare. The active ingredient was found to be trichothecene T-2 mycotoxin, and it was produced in quantity and weaponized prior to the passage of the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972. The Soviets were accused of using the agent, dubbed "yellow rain", to cause 6,300 deaths in Laos, Kampuchea, and Afghanistan between 1975 and 1981.[16][17] The "biological warfare agent" was later purported to be merely bee feces,[18][19] but the issue remains disputed."
"wheat flour"
"Since fungi are well-known as producers of mycotoxins, it has been reasonable to attribute these changes to. the increased growth of fungi. In an earlier study the authors were able to show that blueberries from artificially fertilized forest land make hens infertile in that after eating these berries they laid eggs without shells or with defective shells. In large doses the blueberries were so toxic that all the hens died."
"General description
3-Acetyldeoxynivalenol is a trichothecene mycotoxin, secreted by Fusarium species. It stimulates the activation of c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK)/ p38 mitogen-activated protein kinases and prevents protein synthesis. 3-Acetyldeoxynivalenol is a weak inducer of apoptosis.
Application
3-Acetyldeoxynivalenol has been used in a study to compare the ability of two fungi to improve wheat growth, decrease root colonization of Fusarium, and withstand mycotoxins. 3-Acetyldeoxynivalenol has also been used to induce and study anorexia in mice."
THat is a bold claim. The share of people in the US identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender has risen from 3.5% in 2012 to 5.6% in 2020. Not very constant if you ask me.
I think this growth is more plausibly explained by changes in public tolerance of homosexuality making people more comfortable declaring something than a commensurate increase in mould in food...
Thing is, we literally have no idea. There was the "hide this" aspect, truly and surely. But we have never, even today, had an accurate, truthful rendering of numbers.
So the numbers could have risen, fallen, been the same.
One thing I will say, stating it's always been the same over all human history seems flawed. Even if it's genetic, genes change in populations over time.
"Relatively constant" doesn't mean "5.0%". It means it's always been present (which is true as far as we can tell, it's even present in other mammals), and it's always been a small minority.
More important still, regardless of what the actual level is, we haven't seen any evidence of sudden outbreaks of homosexuality in populations reliant on a particular contaminated source of food, or apparent decline in homosexuality following stricter controls on food storage, or any of the sorts of things you'd expect if homosexual attraction was generally cause by exposure to particular foodstuffs
(cf the leaded gasoline and criminality hypothesis, which sounds pretty speculative but gets more plausible when people start modelling data on regional levels and controlling for other causal factors)
Yes, which is why this guy studying rabbits as livestock in 1987 was the last guy to even try.
There's several anecdotal reports on YouTube of people doing gut cleanses and then losing their homosexual urges[1]. They said it was worms or parasites doing it, but I couldn't find any evidence for a possible casual link. I started digging around in pubmed for something else related and found these citations and started connecting dots. While replying in this thread, I just discovered the one about the vegetarians having more fusarium in their gut than standard diet eaters. There are a couple of random threads on internet forums asking why the LGBTQ people are more likely to be vegetarian. The rabbit hole grows! My guess would be the heavily processed food in standard diets probably has a lot more anti-mold preservatives in it or something like that.
Absolutely nobody who values their career will ever follow up on this hypothesis, so I just throw it out there for open discussion when it's on topic. Btw, I do some independent alt health research, but I have no credentials so I'm not worried that I'm never going to get a grant again for even coming up with this idea. I couldn't get one in the first place.
You'd be amazed how many citations can be found for research into possible causes of homosexuality conducted since 1987.
You will forgive me for suggesting that searching for citations to support a YouTube video in which an individual whose description of his "homosexual urges" is straight out of a Jack Chick tract shills for the parasite cleanse services of a naturopath who not only "cured" him of his homosexuality but discovered the medical profession had misdiagnosed his friend with Stage IV lung and bowel cancer when actually she just had "demonic" parasites too may not be a fruitful use of your time for reasons other than lack of grant availability.
The searches for the causes of homosexuality, as far as I'm aware must satisfy two criteria. 1. They are determined before birth and 2. Sexual orientation is immutable after birth. This is kind of like the dogma that amyloid plaques are the only cause of Alzheimer's and specific identifiable genetic mutations are the only cause of cancer. Both have been research dead for years, yet they keep getting grant money.
Because I am a nobody hobbyist I can come up with whatever theory I want and look for evidence for it in the medical literature.
Sure this guy is a religious guy, but he's just reporting a personal experience. No credentials needed for that really.
I'm afraid if you're credulous enough to believe a guy claiming that a particular quack's "parasite cleansing" service not only cured him of 24/7 anal sex obsession (which is totally how real gay people feel) but also his friend of late stage cancer is a real life data point and not transparently false advertising for said quack's services, you're probably not in a position to cast aspersions on the quality of medical research, and not because medical research is above criticism. No, you don't need any credentials to testify that you have personally experienced parasite cleansing miraculously curing homosexuality and ailments apparently mistakenly identified as late stage cancer in YouTube video. Nor do you need to have ever been homosexual, or to have the slightest idea what's involved in cancer diagnoses.
Trust me, it's entirely possible to get funding for research into post natal causes of homosexuality and the last high profile study on genetics reached the rather unfashionable conclusion that the most obvious candidate "gay genes" not only had little explanatory power but were more to do with sexual openness in general than homosexuality per se in a blaze of publicity with no career-limiting consequences whatsoever. Please don't mistake professionals' lack of faith in the veracity of stuff like Jennifer Daniels' patient testimony for rigid adherence to their own dogmas.
You are of course free to use your time how you want, and there's value in pursuing unconventional theories, but the ability to screen out palpable nonsense is pretty fundamental to that.
The issue is threatening the freedoms of a group by treating their sexual orientation pathologically. Even referring to homosexual "outbreaks" is pretty troubling to me. Humans are capable of some awful things with very little perturbation.
It can, but there are a lot of people studying causes of homosexuality nevertheless.
And even if there weren't, if the back-of-the-envelope evidence points in the opposite direction (if there's any correlation at all between homosexuality and fungi in foods, it's that we're observing more people declare themselves to be homosexual in populations eating commercially produced and processed food screened for zearalenone which is the opposite of the expected result if zearalenone is the causal factor, and "outbreaks" of homosexuality amongst groups with shared diets simply aren't observed) it's not a theory with much in its favour.
People can also choose for themselves within the constraints of their biological predilection. Society becoming tolerant then becomes subject to sexuality fads, and the percentage of people is identifying openly with sexuality of any stripe will fluctuate around a baseline.
The percentage of people who are genetically, intrinsically, unchangeably bound to a particular identity will reveal itself over time so long as culture remains tolerant. To correct for fads and fashion, we'll probably need a few centuries.
Absent sufficient data, confounding factors will make any assertions about external factors affecting sexuality impossible to falsify.
We'll have reverse engineered the brain, and genetic influence on behavior and personality, long before we've collected enough data to empirically correlate sexuality accurately enough to validate hypotheses like "mold is making people hay."
I know a lot of people feel more comfortable coming out now which is a good thing, but to add some anecdata to this...I know, and have heard of, a large number of people who claim to be gay or bi and by every indication are not. Not that their sexuality is my concern, but a few of them are obviously just posturing or something. I don't know if they've attached virtue to certain sexualities, or maybe they need to feel like they're a minority so they aren't "oppressors" (they're all whites, of the concerned variety), or if they got invested in gay culture and feel like they belong to it, or if they fetishized it or whatever but it's weird. I literally had one woman tell me, who proclaims her bisexuality every chance she gets and paints her nails rainbow colors on pride day, say that sex with women was gross...sorry lady, but I don't think you're a bisexual...
Is there a word for this? It's like the label of something has taken on more importance in their minds than the meaning behind it.
Interesting, I haven't heard of this before. Aren't almost all of those nuts/grains roasted before they're consumed? That should kill off any mold spores.
Stop twisting the parents words to fit your narrative.
They didn't claim that the mycotoxin is the sole cause of homosexuality, just that it may be a cause. There can be a myriad other causes, and this particular link is also not certain.
Multiple times, I've performed a multi-hour intestinal cleanse from the Yogic disciplines. And many times there is a mental-emotional release hours later.
While the direction of causality feels given, I would like the arguments held up to scrutiny. Why wouldn't the body exude control over the gut biome by influencing its environment?
I find it odd that people acknowledge the fearsome complexity of the gut biome with one breath before saying that they hope to isolate a single molecule made by it to positively affect another complex phenomenon, with the next.
Hmmm...so it would theoretically be possible to make a pill that would alter that, and so influence what you think, feel, and say?
Zager and Evans in their well known oral presentation on likely future directions and developments of humanity didn't have that happening for another 1500 years.
