Tag Archives: dietary habits

Questions & Answers

What You Need To Know About Arsenic And The Gut Flora

I read a fascinating study about the impact of arsenic on the microbiome. Professor Anne Hoen did the study out of her lab at Dartmouth.

Dr. Hoen studied the effects of small amounts of arsenic on the microbiome of rats. She discovered that arsenic had a dramatic impact on how the bacteria in the gut functioned. From there, Dr. Hoen decided to do a study of the effects of arsenic on the infant microbiome.

This study was conducted in New Hampshire, a state known to have a significant amount of arsenic in the ground and groundwater. The arsenic is naturally occurring, but it enters private wells. Of course, people who drink this water, including pregnant and nursing women, are exposed to the arsenic.

What they discovered is that when babies are exposed to arsenic, their microbiome is disrupted. Arsenic kills some of the gut bacteria in the infant gut.

Further readings:

My recommendation is to get a good quality water filter, whether you live in New Hampshire or not. The water filter will remove chemicals like chlorine, fluoride, heavy metals, PCBs, dioxins, and other toxic compounds.

The take-home message from this study is to have your water assessed if you live in an area with naturally occurring arsenic.

If the lab analysis of your water shows significant level of heavy metals, have a hair analysis done as well.

I once had a client who was not improving over time. A sample of the hair on his head showed very little. When we requested an analysis of a pubic hair sample, we found elevated mercury and copper levels.

Copper and other metals like mercury, arsenic, cadmium, and lead are attracted to a particular protein on the cell surface. Copper has a very high affinity for that particular receptor. If we see an elevated copper, we have a high index of suspicion that the patient’s got a heavy metal problem. We can then consider doing a provocation test to see if the patient is going to dump a large chunk of metal. Essentially, we’ve found a potential cause for poor health.

Cutting to the chase, don’t let your children drink water if it’s contaminated. Get the water checked if you’ve got a well. If there are health problems in the family, get some hair analysis to rule out possible heavy metal contamination.

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Questions & Answers

Antibiotic-Associated Diarrhea: Words of Caution

Antibiotic-associated diarrhea is very common.

I’ve seen many people over the years who’ve developed diarrhea after using antibiotics. Clostridium difficile (C. diff) is the most common cause of antibiotic-associated diarrhea.

An interesting study by Dr. Lisa Dawson and colleagues reported that C. diff produces a compound called Para-cresol. This chemical inhibits a wide range of microorganisms. By dispersing surrounding bacteria, Para-cresol opens the door for C. diff to colonize readily.

There aren’t many species of gut bacteria that produce Para-cresol, but C. diff is one of them. As a result, C. diff has a competitive edge in the gut.

Further readings:

Candida does something similar. It creates various toxins, including gliotoxin. These toxins are almost like shards of glass – no matter how much you try and clean them up, there’s still some left behind.

Gliotoxin can travel through the bloodstream and cause a lot of problems.
It’s defense mechanisms like gliotoxin and Para-cresol that have allowed yeast and bacteria to survive for thousands, if not millions, of years.

To my mind, the best solution is not to take antibiotics in the first place unless absolutely necessary. I think that over time, scientists and the medical field will come to see that the collateral damage caused by antibiotics is intolerable. There has to be a better way.

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Questions & Answers

Itch Receptors And Irritable Bowel Syndrome

About nine to eleven percent of the people in western countries suffer from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Based on my years of practice, I think there are a number of factors that contribute to IBS symptoms.

I’ve worked with IBS patients now for many years. Some of them experience abdominal pain so bad it’s debilitating, and they can barely work. They can barely move.

Not all IBS patients have abdominal pain, but many do. The pain can range from mild to incapacitating.

A study conducted at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, found that people with IBS have itch receptors in their small bowel that are particularly activated in the presence of IBS. When these receptors are activated, they can trigger pain. These receptors are trigger-happy in some people, although research is still ongoing to determine what does and doesn’t activate these itch receptors.

Further readings:

When someone has IBS for a long time, there is a reconfiguration of the neuronal pathways in the gut.

There are many causes of IBS. I don’t believe that we can lay all the blame on the reconfigured neurons.

What are the possible causes of neuronal dysfunction in the gut? Every time I’ve had my IBS clients do a comprehensive stool analysis, I have found something out of order. It could be bacterial overgrowth, it could be yeast or parasites, and sometimes it’s all three.

If you have IBS, I suggest having a comprehensive assessment of your GI tract by a gastroenterologist. Then, go to a naturopath or functional medicine doctor and get a stool test. See if you have SIBO or small intestinal fungal overgrowth (SIFO).

Next, treat the abnormalities in your gut. Clean up your diet and work on your stress. Once you’ve done all that, reassess your IBS symptoms, including abdominal pain.

if you have got Irritable Bowel Syndrome, find the cause. And if you can’t find the cause, maybe you can mitigate the symptoms. Over time, most of the IBS patients I’ve worked with have had a significant reduction in symptoms.

Look at the cause. Identify it, treat it. It makes a big difference.

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Questions & Answers

Gut Flora And Artificial Sweeteners: What You Need To Know

Is it a good idea to drink diet drinks? Is it okay for the beneficial bacteria in your gut?

Scientists that exposed gut bacteria to six major classes of artificial sugars found that it had an adverse effect on the flora. The gut bacteria quickly began to produce toxins in response to being exposed to artificial sugars.

Artificial sugars have now been linked to so many different types of diseases, like reducing your risk of getting pregnant and an increased risk of stroke.

Further readings:

Artificial sweeteners have also been linked to diabetes, obesity, and dementia. More recently, the link has been made to a disruption of the bowel flora.

To my mind, it is clear that artificial sweeteners are not something you want to have in your body.

People who drink diet pop should be very careful. They could be altering their gut bacteria for the worse.

Artificial sugars aren’t just in diet drinks. They are found in well over half of the foods found in supermarkets in America. It’s entirely possible that you are unknowingly eating these sugars and affecting your bowel flora.

Make sure you read the package of everything you buy to see if it contains any artificial sugar. If it does, put it back. You don’t want to be eating that kind of stuff.

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Questions & Answers

Fecal Microbial Transplant: What You Need To Know

I have been following the science of fecal microbial transplants for years.

I just saw on Wikipedia that it was first performed in 1958 in the States. Still, more recently since the 1980s, it’s been performed and probably likely pioneered by the Center for Digestive Diseases in Sydney, Australia.

After a medical conference in Sydney, I had some discussions with some of the doctors that work at the CDC. One of the doctors said that when they first started doing the pilot studies with a group of about 20 patients, after 12 months, all patients had exactly the same problem that they had prior to the transplant. So it’s not a cure-all. FMT was originally used particularly for Clostridium difficile, quite a nasty gut infection you can get, which can lead to some serious bowel problems. In fact, it’s now sort of become the standard treatment for C. diff in America.

My personal opinion on FMT is, in most cases, it’s not going to have much effect on the patient.
Doctor Thomas Borody from the CDC, for example, in 1988, had a successful attempt at working with a patient with ulcerative colitis (UC) with FMT. The patient went into remission for a considerable period and then relapsed. I worked with over 100 cases of UC in the last several years, and they had almost a complete remission for an extended period using no FMT whatsoever.

My clients were able to go into remission through stool testing, eliminating the main pathogens, rebuilding the gut with probiotics, and following an anti-inflammatory diet.

Fecal microbial transplant, in my opinion, is clutching at straws. It’s a last resort kind of thing that many people jump into, but now it’s sort of seen as a first resort. I think it should be reserved for rare and unusual cases where other avenues have been exhausted. In my personal opinion, it’s not required in 99% of cases.

Now, I’m probably going to get some comments back along the lines of, “I had successful FMT or I would’ve been dead years ago.” I’m sure there’ll be people out there like that, but you’ll likely be only 1% of patients with serious gut problems.

Further readings:

For 99% of people, it’s possible to get great results through regular stool tests, getting on top of leaky gut, addressing SIBO, and managing Candida.

If you fix things up earlier, they don’t become serious problems down the track, requiring things like FMT. Now, as I mentioned, there will be rare, genetically-linked cases that may benefit from FMT.

Several years ago, I had a young client from the UK who had a very dysfunctional GI system. I tried many things with her and couldn’t get the result I was looking for. The parents had plenty of money, so they flew the girl to Sydney. The girl had FMT, and for three months, it was all hunky-dory. This girl thought she was cured, but then, bang, straight back to where she was. 30 grand later, she’s back in the same hole she was in the beginning.

Ultimately, the solution for this young lady was probiotics. Once we found the correct probiotics for her, literally within a month, she was back at university again. It’s as simple as that, okay? This girl spent a lot of money going to all different clinics, tried all of the different types of antibiotics, many different things, but in the end, it was just probiotics that fixed her up.

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