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Great gut extinction: Has modern life destroyed our health

justy

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Great article found on the BBC news website

Our modern lifestyle is often blamed for the explosion in conditions like asthma, diabetes and obesity - but the evidence that our predecessors didn't suffer such ailments has been hard to come by - until now.
In 2008 a military helicopter chanced upon a previously uncharted group of huts in the remote Amazonas region in southern Venezuela, home to 15,000 Yanomami people.
Thought to have been completely isolated since their ancestors arrived in South America after the last ice age, the semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers have never been exposed to modern civilisation - therefore neither have their guts.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-32543176
 

PeterPositive

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1,426
Eh... pretty scary stuff.
But it makes a lot of sense. Just taking a look at the life style of my grand parents I can see the difference. And they were made of hard steel. I wish I had 50% of their immune strength and vitality.

My father's mother could eat half a chocolate cake in her mid 80s without feeling it :D No heart problems, no diabetes. Just a bit of circulatory issues and bad vision. At 85?! Where do I sign? :lol:
 

justy

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Yes I agree - my grandparents lived into their 90's and my grandmothers sister is 102 - still going strong! not many health issues for any of them - and they ate a very clean diet, despite growing up in very poor conditions in the East End of London. I cant even look at a piece of chocolate cake without getting indigestion and insomnia!
 

Hip

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I wonder why they chose to focus only on the bacteria in the gut, and ignore what pathogens these Indians have in their blood.

It would be interesting to know whether these Yanomami people are carriers of the common viruses that are linked to so many chronic diseases — viruses such as HHV-6, HHV-7, EBV, CMV, varicella, coxsackievirus B, echovirus, measles, mumps, rubella, papillomavirus, rotavirus, etc.

Do they have Helicobacter infections in their stomachs like much of the West does? Are they infected with Chlamydia pneumoniae like much of the West is? What about TB.



The published study is here: The microbiome of uncontacted Amerindians | Science Advances
 

Gondwanaland

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5,092
Volar forearm skin, oral mucosa, and fecal samples were collected before the health team vaccinated children and administered antibiotics.
:eek:
It would be interesting to know whether these Yanomami people are carriers of the common viruses that are linked to so many chronic diseases — viruses such as HHV-6, HHV-7, EBV, CMV, varicella, coxsackievirus B, echovirus, measles, mumps, rubella, papillomavirus, rotavirus, etc.
Millions were decimated by the 1st contact with varicella and flu viruses when the European exploiters arrived.
 

Sidereal

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4,856
Their guts are incredibly diverse compared to Americans but also full of what we would consider gram negative beasts. Just goes to show you it doesn't matter much if you harbour pathogens as long as you have a very diverse microbiome with a full complement of commensal bacteria on deck protecting you from inflammation.
 

Hip

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Millions were decimated by the 1st contact with varicella and flu viruses when the European exploiters arrived.

Sure, but if this group of Yanomami are "'thought to have been completely isolated since their ancestors arrived in South America after the last ice age," the Yanomami may not have been touched by all these imported microbial diseases from the Old World (ie, Africa, Europe and Asia). The last ice age came to an end around 11,000 BC.

Presumably that's why the Yanomami were vaccinated by the researchers: to prevent them catching these Old World diseases from the scientists. I also read in this article that:
The Venezuelan Ministry of Health routinely visits newfound communities, and provides them with medical services, including vaccinations aimed at protecting villagers from diseases brought by illegal miners and others venturing into the Amazon.



It would have be interesting to see what viruses the Yanomami carry. I don't buy this idea that the diseases of modernity like asthma, diabetes and obesity are entirely caused by a changes in the microbiome. The microbiome may play a role, but I would wager it's more the infections actually in your body tissues, such as all the viruses we harbor, which play the major role in precipitating chronic diseases.

Asthma for example is associated with rhinovirus, human respiratory syncytial virus and the bacterium Chlamydia pneumoniae.



As an aside: I wonder why there were so many more nasty diseases in the Old World compare the New World.

Have a look at this table in the Wikipedia article on the Columbian Exchange (= the widespread transfer of animals, plants, culture, human populations, communicable diseases, technology and ideas between the American and Afro-Eurasian hemispheres in the 15th and 16th centuries).

There were almost 4 times as many infectious diseases transferred to the New World from the Old World as there were transferred in the other direction. What is it about the Old World that made it produce so many more nasty diseases?
 
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Martial

Senior Member
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1,409
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Ventura, CA
I often wondered about this, people had their share of health issues back in the day though. The rampant spread of tuberculosis that was uncurative back in the day for one example. They just didn't seem to suffer from stress induced and enviromental illness as often.
 

GhostGum

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Vic, AU
As an aside: I wonder why there were so many more nasty diseases in the Old World compare the New World.

Have a look at this table in the Wikipedia article on the Columbian Exchange (= the widespread transfer of animals, plants, culture, human populations, communicable diseases, technology and ideas between the American and Afro-Eurasian hemispheres in the 15th and 16th centuries).

There were almost 4 times as many infectious diseases transferred to the New World from the Old World as there were transferred in the other direction. What is it about the Old World that made it produce so many more nasty diseases?

There is probably some great irony here that people in the old world, who believed they were superior, more cultured and cleanly, but actually sheltered themselves from a natural existence, created better circumstances for diseases to flourish.

I remember a short mention in a book once about Europeans observing Native American's swimming naked in an icy cold river in the middle of winter, the writer was commenting on their toughness, but what it really was was an example of generations on adaptation to an existence in nature. Can you imagine what it would be like to have lived in an untouched North American centuries ago? I am guessing much cleaner than 16th century London.

Increased living standards, increased comfort and increased avoidance of the actual world outside our buildings has probably made us all a little bit too soft, lack of whole foods and diet diversity, toxins everywhere, blah blah blah...
 

JPV

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858
Yep, I think there's definitely something to all this. My mother told me that my grandmother, who lived in Croatia, was not particularly fastidious about hygiene or cleanliness yet she rarely if ever got sick.
 
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Mij

Messages
2,353
Eh... pretty scary stuff.
But it makes a lot of sense. Just taking a look at the life style of my grand parents I can see the difference. And they were made of hard steel. I wish I had 50% of their immune strength and vitality.

My father's mother could eat half a chocolate cake in her mid 80s without feeling it :D No heart problems, no diabetes. Just a bit of circulatory issues and bad vision. At 85?! Where do I sign? :lol:

Neither of my parents ever had a cold, flu or even headache. They ate whatever they pleased too. It kind of explains why they never understood why I was sick :rolleyes:

When my mother came to visit a few years ago she went out to the market to buy various cheeses but walked around with it in 40 C temperatures for a few hours. When we ate the cheese later she was fine, but my gut was ugggghhh within half an hour. I was sick for the remainder of the day. She couldn't understand why I got sick.
 

Hip

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17,824
There is probably some great irony here that people in the old world, who believed they were superior, more cultured and cleanly, but actually sheltered themselves from a natural existence, created better circumstances for diseases to flourish.

The Old World is not just the continent of Europe; it's also the continents of Africa and Asia, much of which was very primitive back in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Since new human pathogens can appear as a result of microbes jumping species from animal to humans, my guess is that Africa and Asia probably played a major role in creating these nasty human pathogens that spread to the New World, as there are a great deal more wild animal species roaming around in Africa and Asia, compared to Europe.

HIV for example is thought to have arisen in Africa from the SIV primate version of this virus that jumped species into humans. The fact that in Africa bushmeat (meat from wild animals) is often eaten helps create a bridge for nasty pathogens to cross between wild animals and man. Ebola has also been linked to eating bushmeat.

And as we know, the constant risk of a bird flu virus spreading to humans is highest in Asian continent countries like China, where humans live very closely with their chickens.

This spread of animal pathogens into humans is apparently occurs quite regularly. However, not every microbe that spreads into humans is as nasty as HIV or Ebola virus. Simian foamy virus, a retrovirus related to HIV, has recently been found to have passed into humans, but so far people with this virus have not shown signs of disease.


Nathan Wolfe, the director of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, has been tasked with trying to detect pathogens that exist in animals that may spread to humans and cause the next pandemic:
Wolfe describes how most of those emerging infectious diseases originally start out in animals before making the jump to us.

"Almost all of them start from an animal virus, an animal microbe that jumps over to humans," says Wolfe. "That's actually the same with most of the major diseases of humanity. These things actually start with animals."
 
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Hip

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I wonder whether the Yanomami microbiota contains many spore-forming bacteria.

Those who argue for the benefits of soil-based organism probiotics (like Prescript-Assist and the Clostridium butyricum probiotic which I have just started taking myself) say that peoples who live closely with the land or with nature would naturally be more exposed to soil-based organisms, and so would naturally have these spore-forming organisms from the soil in their guts. This is an argument for the safety and normality of soil-based organism probiotics. However, I have not sen any studies which confirm this idea.

The Yanomami might be a good group of people to test this theory on.
 

Martial

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I wonder whether the Yanomami microbiota contains many spore-forming bacteria.

Those who argue for the benefits of soil-based organism probiotics (like Prescript-Assist and the Clostridium butyricum probiotic which I have just started taking myself) say that peoples who live closely with the land or with nature would naturally be more exposed to soil-based organisms, and so would naturally have these spore-forming organisms from the soil in their guts. This is an argument for the safety and normality of soil-based organism probiotics. However, I have not sen any studies which confirm this idea.

The Yanomami might be a good group of people to test this theory on.

The supplemented probiotics are extracts though. The risk is probably eating the soul directly. Although you get some of the good bacteria, it's also a higher risk of Protozoa, parasitic, worms, and other pathogens being picked up as well.
 

Hip

Senior Member
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17,824
The supplemented probiotics are extracts though. The risk is probably eating the soul directly. Although you get some of the good bacteria, it's also a higher risk of Protozoa, parasitic, worms, and other pathogens being picked up as well.

No, the argument that some people are offering is that spore-forming bacteria from the soil make safe probiotics because our ancestors living closely with the land would have naturally had these bacterial in their guts.

But the question I have always asked is: did our ancestors actually have spore-forming bacteria in their guts. It's an assumption made by those arguing for the safety of spore-forming probiotics.

If their argument is correct, you would expect the Yanomami, who live closely with the land, to have spore-forming bacteria from the soil in their guts. That's why I would like to know if they do.