The Resistant Starch Challenge: Is It The Key We've Been Looking For?

[adreno]

So are Clostridia good or bad? @adreno will you keep taking it or quit?

I am a bit skeptical about those studies. What were the criteria used? Short or long term CFS? Also the rituximab cases speak against this. It's probably all about subsets.

In any case, my symptoms point to autoimmunity, so I will continue.

 

[Sidereal]

I am a bit skeptical about those studies. What were the criteria used? Short or long term CFS? Also the rituximab cases speak against this. It's probably all about subsets.

In any case, my symptoms point to autoimmunity, so I will continue.

Yeah. There was that recent paper showing lower IL-10 in the spinal fluid of CFS patients compared to controls.

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...ospinal-fluids-of-patients-with-cfs-me.35953/

Who the hell knows what's going on. At this point, I've stopped paying attention to immunological studies of this condition because results are so contradictory and most of the time don't add up to anything. When it comes to prebiotics, I go with the pragmatic approach of taking whatever seems to be producing positive effects (while keeping in mind that there will be transient inflammatory side effects from most of these substances so the benefit may not be apparent for a while).

 

[adreno]

This blog post by Dr. Art Ayers stresses the importance of clostria (and RS) in treating autoimmunity:

Autoimmunity Starts with Inflammation, but Requires Deficient Tregs

Bacterial or viral infections, or physical damage causing inflammation is the first step in autoimmunity. It is the inflammation that initiates the interactions between proteins, autoantigens, of normal cells and cells of the immune system that bind, internalize, fragment and present the antigen fragments/peptides to activate B or T cells with corresponding receptors. The activated B cells make antibodies specific for the antigen and the T cells will kill cells displaying the antigen. It is interesting that most proteins are not autoantigens and are never involved immune reactions. Only proteins with an unusual triplet of basic amino acids, similar to the quartet of basic amino acids used to transport proteins into the cell nucleus, are candidates to be autoantigens or allergens. In fact, since nuclear proteins already have a quartet, i.e. the nuclear localization signal, they are common autoantigens. The last requirement for autoimmunity is a deficiency in Tregs, because if the Tregs are functioning, they will block attack on healthy cells. Treg deficiency usually results from loss of the type of gut bacteria that stimulate Treg production in the lining of the intestines, i.e. species of Clostridium.

Cure Autoimmunity by Feeding Clostridium Resistant Starch

Autoimmune diseases, by their symptoms, show that sufficient gut flora to stimulate the aggressive half of the immune system is still present. What is missing are the Clostridium species that convert soluble fiber, such as resistant starch, into short chain fatty acids, e.g. butyrate. Patients treated with antibiotics usually walk away from the hospital with a suggestion to eat some yogurt to repopulate their missing gut flora. Unfortunately, dairy probiotics don’t survive in the gut and cannot repair the gut flora and immune system. The result, after the gut fails to repair and the immune system crashes, is autoimmunity. There is a more appropriate possibility to avoid or fix autoimmunity. Some people suffering from autoimmunity (and with remnants of their gut flora intact) have simply fed their gut flora on resistant starch and achieved complete recoveries. Others fail to respond, because their gut flora is too severely damaged and necessary bacterial species are gone. Those individuals need to eat the missing species of bacteria and some probiotics (more common in Asia) contain Clostridium species. Consistent with this use of soluble fiber to feed gut bacteria that produce butyrate and stimulate the suppressive immune system are reports of healing by combining potato starch (RS) and probiotics with Clostridiumbutyricum (Probiotic-3). Repair of the suppressive immune system by repair of gut flora (including fecal transplants) and feeding gut flora with appropriate soluble fiber, may be a general approach to the cure of most autoimmune diseases and allergies.

http://coolinginflammation.blogspot.se/2014/03/health-diagrams-ii-curing-autoimmunity.html

 

[whodathunkit]

Just chiming in to say that I've been noticing a markedly beneficial change in the integrity of the skin on my feet in the last several weeks. This is a new thing and only happened since I started the gut project. So I'm sure it's due to that.

Over the past six/seven years or more my feet have gotten increasingly dry and scaly. I've kept the skanky feet at bay by using sandpaper paddles and pumice + foot moisturizing lotion every day, because where I live I wear sandals at least 320 days per year, so if your feet look bad everyone can see it. But it's a lot of work. And if I skip it for a few days my heels get very rough, sometimes to the point of cracking (although that doesn't happen very often).

But about two weeks after starting to work on my gut I started noticing that my feet are not as dry. I waited to say anything because I wanted to give it time to make sure I wasn't just imagining things, and I'm not.

I'm definitely not having to spend as much time grooming my feet every day. A very light smoothing with the sandpaper paddle is all it takes. I also don't have to moisturize them every day, although I will probably continue to do that.

In addition to wearing sandals daily I also go barefoot a lot, so the extra grooming won't go away, since it also helps clean the feet in addition to smoothing them out. But it's very nice not to have to spend so much time and energy on them. Instead of 10 mins per day I'm only spending 5 mins and that's better.

Thanks to all here on the gut thread who helped contribute to that.

 

[melamine]

I recently ordered AOR Probiotic-3 and expect delivery today, so haven't had a chance to try it. It's the only probiotic I'm aware of that contains a Clostridium species. @adreno's article above mentions that more species might be available in some probiotics in Asia. I wonder if any of those might be available to order from US.

I have recently begun using RS potato starch following a course of Clindamycin and have not had any problem tolerating it even at 3 Tbsp. I was using a relatively small amount of larch arbinogalactan with it and most days eat some beet root powder in my salad dressing. I haven't yet worked out the best balance of RSs and probiotics but lean heavily on bifidos and include infantis and some yeasts.

 

[Sidereal]

I recently ordered AOR Probiotic-3 and expect delivery today, so haven't had a chance to try it. It's the only probiotic I'm aware of that contains a Clostridium species. @adreno's article above mentions that more species might be available in some probiotics in Asia. I wonder if any of those might be available to order from US.

AOR 3 also contains a species of strep which turned out to be a big problem for me (but not for other people posting on blogs) so just in case you notice negatives from this product I wouldn't rule out trying Clostridium butyricum on its own. There is a supplement you can buy on Amazon (shipped from Japan) that contains just C. butyricum.

 

[melamine]

AOR 3 also contains a species of strep which turned out to be a big problem for me (but not for other people posting on blogs) so just in case you notice negatives from this product I wouldn't rule out trying Clostridium butyricum on its own. There is a supplement you can buy on Amazon (shipped from Japan) that contains just C. butyricum.

Thanks, @Sidereal! How were you able to determine that it was the strep sp.? I always have a problem sorting out things like that. Care to elaborate on why you might have had a problem with the strep or symptoms?

What I noticed almost immediately on starting my regimen with the RS (and probiotics) was a normalizing of bowel movements and more frequency.

 

[Sidereal]

Thanks, @Sidereal! How were you able to determine that it was the strep sp.? I always have a problem sorting out things like that. Care to elaborate on why you might have had a problem with the strep or symptoms?

What I noticed almost immediately on starting my regimen with the RS (and probiotics) was a normalizing of bowel movements and more frequency.

Only managed to figure it out because it caused several nasty symptoms like allergy, leg rash and tooth pain and the temporal relationship was pretty obvious between the supplement and the symptoms. I have a lifelong problem with strep and this probiotic caused a tooth infection which I was told would require a root canal (no thanks) so strep seemed like the obvious problem. I read that this species is a common pathogen found in root canal teeth. In India some dentists use triphala to deal with it (several papers on Pubmed) which I used to get rid of the problem.

Anyway, don't mind me, I'm a basket case. If you can take 3 tablespoons of RS without problems chances are your gut is in much better shape and you won't have problems from AOR 3.

 

[adreno]

@adreno's article above mentions that more species might be available in some probiotics in Asia. I wonder if any of those might be available to order from US.

The Miyarisan I mentioned in an earlier post today is clostridium butyricum. You can find it on Amazon and eBay.

 

[melamine]

I read that this species is a common pathogen found in root canal teeth. In India some dentists use triphala to deal with it (several papers on Pubmed) which I used to get rid of the problem.

Looks like I might have made a mistake ordering AOR. I'd better look into this further because I have a couple of root canalled teeth that I can't afford to lose, and I don't want to exacerbate inherent problems with them.

Wish I'd ordered this one now instead - thanks, @adreno. Same c. butyricum but without the other things:

The Miyarisan I mentioned in an earlier post today is clostridium butyricum. You can find it on Amazon and eBay.

 

[whodathunkit]

@melamine: I use AOR 3 with no problem. I think @Sidereal is right...his was a special case. Not to say he is a "basket case" as he claims ...I highly, highly doubt that regardless of his physical health, his cogent posts here say otherwise...but meaning if you don't have a problem with strep in general you're probably unlikely to have a problem like his.

However, after reading about his problem I did step down my dose (I was high-dosing 3 caps per day for a while, along with bolusing RS, now using 1 cap per day or sometimes a few times per week), and have taken the prophylactic measure of keeping my mouth extra, extra clean. I make my own mouthwash so upped the proportion of ethyl alcohol in that, plus using all methods of cleaning every night (floss, waterpik, brushing, gum massage, etc.). Some people also like oil pulling, which I find time-consuming.

But I also have the miyarisan and have been using that daily. I think it's part of the reason the skin on my feet is rather suddenly much better, but then, it's hard to say. There was improvement before I started the miyarisan, but I've been using it for a couple of weeks and just in the last week noticed a bigger improvement. Since the c.butyricum is supposed to help with fatty acid production it may be helping the integrity of skin in the same way fatty acids help with gut permeability. Also worth noting is that I've increased my bifido intake, as well, since I understand they work in synergy with c.butyricum. The bifidos could be having a beneficial effect, too . Someone please correct me if I'm way off base about all this.

 

[Sidereal]

@whodathunkit, Sid is a female.

 

[Vegas]

Yeah. There was that recent paper showing lower IL-10 in the spinal fluid of CFS patients compared to controls.

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...ospinal-fluids-of-patients-with-cfs-me.35953/

Who the hell knows what's going on. At this point, I've stopped paying attention to immunological studies of this condition because results are so contradictory and most of the time don't add up to anything. When it comes to prebiotics, I go with the pragmatic approach of taking whatever seems to be producing positive effects (while keeping in mind that there will be transient inflammatory side effects from most of these substances so the benefit may not be apparent for a while).

I agree on both counts. First, try to minimize inflammation; don't force prebiotics for their own sake. This is where many of these "root" products that play a part in the tryptophan/indole metabolism and can enhance barrier function and limit peripheral immunostimulation have great potential. Perhaps these represent a good start for prebiotic supplementation.

I'm not sure where to start with this discussion about Tregs, but our microbes matter. A ten minute review of how bacterial metabolites influence immune function is all it takes to understand that this is a critical component. The role of our microbes is no longer debatable. What I think would surprise most people is just how intertwined microbes are to maintaining an appropriate immune response. The other thing that is not well known is how nutrient availability and bio-transformation are involved in modulating T-regs. Study of Treg homeostasis offers an exceptional view into what our microbes do, and I think we can use the restoration of T-reg homeostasis as a model to gain some insight into how to restore the microbiome to a more optimal composition for health, to the extent that the current data allows us and we can interpret the significance of this.

What we do know is that these Tregs will be influenced by scores of microbially-driven processes; clearly this is something that has confounded the traditional analysis of the significance of immune markers, and, I think, points to Immunometabolism as the future of immunology. Unfortunately, this field is in its infancy, as is the understanding of bacterial-host immunity. Moreover, I think it is doubtful that many of these scientist have much insight into many of the more specific biochemical and microbiological fields that link these areas. There needs to be a multi-disciplinary effort because no one is putting all these pieces together. Those who get paid to research this stuff only understand bits and pieces of the problem outside of their super-specialties. I've talked to a number of these folks and I regularly get the same response that simply suggests that they don't have knowledge of the greater dynamic.

The good news is that discoveries in this area have been hugely aided by polymerase chain reaction technologies, and while the microbial imbalances are clearly not fully understood, the metabolic data looks pretty promising, at least to me. I see plausible explanations for many of the metabolic irregularities. They ostensibly correlate to specific immune functions, and I recognize many of these metabolites as being substrates for specific microbes. If for example we see consistent perturbations of hydroxycinnamic or coumaric acid, I think that is pretty damn telling given that a subset of our microbiome seems to have preferential access to some of these compounds.

 

[whodathunkit]

@whodathunkit, Sid is a female.

@Sidereal...ooops! LOL!

Whodathunkit?!

 

[Sidereal]

@Sidereal...ooops! LOL!

Whodathunkit?!

Well, I would have thought that the female avatar would be a slight hint if not a dead giveaway.

 

[Vegas]

The Miyarisan I mentioned in an earlier post today is clostridium butyricum. You can find it on Amazon and eBay.

One thing Tregs do is inhibit the expression of the genes that precipitate the immune cascade that occurs in response to lipopolysaccharide. Yes, I know I am blinded by this stuff. They also inhibit macrophage activation and function as TLR4 antagonists of sorts.

C. Butyricum also has the ability to influence these genes and of course some of this is clearly related to its synthesis of butyrate. Can one organism materially change the equation? TLR4 antagonist are commonly some of the most beneficial compounds on PR, so if you feel better then go with it. I personally benefited from AOR3. it definitely has a very distal action, and the indole odor is noticeable.

 

[Vegas]

Yeah. There was that recent paper showing lower IL-10 in the spinal fluid of CFS patients compared to controls.

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...ospinal-fluids-of-patients-with-cfs-me.35953/

This is not just about ME/CFS, unhealthy people have messed up colonic metabolic profiles. Our metabolisms are highly regulated by the microorganisms contained in the gut, particularly in the microbially-dense colon and this includes the vitamins they synthesize, the amino acids they metabolize, the carbon flows they direct. Certain pathways are more vulnerable than others. What has also been discovered is how radically these chemical reactions can be altered by changing the microbial structure of the bowel. For example, a single course of certain antibiotics has been shown to effect 85% of all colonic metabolites. Correcting the metabolic mess and the immunologic problem are one in the same. The lipid and steroid metabolism is particularly susceptible.

 

[Sidereal]

I will say that this gut modification process became much more tolerable once I started using a TLR4 antagonist (naltrexone) to dampen down the symptoms caused by LPS. After starting LDN my tolerance of prebiotics probably doubled overnight. It is something to consider perhaps for people who are stuck at the first hurdle where literally everything they take causes intolerable systemic inflammatory symptoms.

 

[jepps]

Well, I would have thought that the female avatar would be a slight hint if not a dead giveaway.

On this occasion, @Sidereal, you have a beautiful avatar

 

[whodathunkit]

Well, I would have thought that the female avatar would be a slight hint if not a dead giveaway.

You'd be surprised. Another forum I go to is mostly guys and a lot of them have female avatars, especially if it's an image of an attractive woman. Which I presume they're attracted to. I think there's a couple guys around here that have female avatars, too, although I can't remember exactly who right now.

At any rate, sometimes you have to bludgeon me like with the Venus symbol PR uses as default if you claim your sex in your profile. I just didn't look that hard at your avatar until this last interchange of ours. But NOW I get it.