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Article: Circadian rhythms and the microbiome: Disrupting daily routine of gut microbes can be bad

We now recognize they’re essential to our health, participating in many important physiological functions such as digestion and metabolism of foods, and immune responses and inflammation; disruption of the gut microbiota might then contribute to a variety of conditions including childhood asthma, obesity, colitis and colon cancer.

New research is beginning to show that the composition and activity of the microbiota exhibits a daily, or circadian, rhythmicity, just like we do. This offers one pathway to explain a Pandora’s box of possible adverse health effects from aspects of modern life, such as eating late at night or too much electric light after sunset.

Maybe something that needs to be taken into account with the microbiome research in respect to ME?

And amusingly the article is written by Richard G. "Bugs" Stevens.

https://theconversation.com/circadi...microbes-can-be-bad-news-for-whole-body-69546
 

RogerBlack

Senior Member
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902
Maybe something that needs to be taken into account with the microbiome research in respect to ME?

https://theconversation.com/circadi...microbes-can-be-bad-news-for-whole-body-69546

It's very, very unclear which way the arrow points in terms of causation in the real world, for most of these microbiome studies.
Yes, bacterial flora in the gut varies over time and disease state.
'Fixing' this and making it normal may not actually help, any more than a spray tan helps when you look a bit pale due to some illness.

Are there going to be illnesses that can be cured by replacing or augmenting gut flora - most certainly.
Are there going to be false positives where the disease state or disease behaviours change gut flora significantly with no real feedback - again, certainly.
 

IThinkImTurningJapanese

Senior Member
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'Fixing' this and making it normal may not actually help, any more than a spray tan helps when you look a bit pale due to some illness.

This analogy is much more representative of taking antacids, or perhaps pharmaceutical drugs when suffering digestive upsets, than using probiotics.

I think a more accurate analogy to probiotics, would be a comparison to sunbathing nude and generating Vitamin D as effectively as possible to rejuvenate health.
 
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RogerBlack

Senior Member
Messages
902
This analogy is much more representative of taking antacids, or perhaps pharmaceutical drugs when suffering digestive upsets, than using probiotics.

I think a more accurate analogy to probiotics would be a comparison to sunbathing nude and generating Vitamin D as effectively as possible to rejuvenate health.

The further analogy would be that lacking vitamin D is a symptom and not a cause of the problem, and doesn't help at all.

If you're bedbound due to illness and have low vitamin D because of low sun, replacing the vitamin D isn't magically going to fix the illness.

There are an enormous number of papers coming out showing changes in the microbiome in various illness states.
There is no more good reason to expect reversing these changes will reverse the illness than expecting fixing 'illness beliefs' will.

In some specific diseases, of course yes, it may.
 

IThinkImTurningJapanese

Senior Member
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Location
Japan
There are an enormous number of papers coming out showing changes in the microbiome in various illness states.
There is no more good reason to expect reversing these changes will reverse the illness than expecting fixing 'illness beliefs' will.

So now you're equating pseudo-psychology with probiotic therapy?

Where are you going with this?
 
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RogerBlack

Senior Member
Messages
902
So now you're equating pseudo-psychology with probiotic therapy?

Where are you going with this?
That was a terribly chosen example.

Simply because an illness causes changes in the gut flora does not mean reversing changes in the gut flora (perhaps through probiotics) will fix the illness. That is all.
For some illnesses it might, but expecting it to in all cases do so is simply not rational.

The point of the fake tan example was not that the cause of the disease was low vitamin D, but that fixing an unrelated symptom (being very pale) won't fix the underlying cause.
 
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IThinkImTurningJapanese

Senior Member
Messages
3,492
Location
Japan
That was a terribly chosen example.

Simply because an illness causes changes in the gut flora does not mean reversing changes in the gut flora (perhaps through probiotics) will fix the illness. That is all.
For some illnesses it might, but expecting it to in all cases do so is simply not rational.

The point of the fake tan example was not that the cause of the disease was low vitamin D, but that fixing an unrelated symptom (being very pale) won't fix the underlying cause.

Ok, I think I understand.

The article referenced here doesn't really talk about curing any illnesses with probiotics. However, if you've lived with ME/CFS for any length of time, I have no doubt that you may have experienced dismissive attitudes towards your condition, as if it could be solved by simply adding yoghurt or kimchi to your diet.

I don't think you'll find that many people here though, that are unaware of the seriousness of this illness.