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Kefir for ME/CFS: Study #2

Cort

Phoenix Rising Founder
This study suggested that you have to take a certain amount of this product (from KCLM) to get results. It included ME/CFS and FM patients

No statistically significant change occurred at 30 days with the 20 g dose with only scales of bodily pain and physical function showing a tendency to improve with scores of 9.1 and 7.0, respectively. On the other hand, with the 30 g dose after the 30-day intake, all scores had improvements greater than 5 points over baseline, ranging from 7.4 for general health to 23.6 for social function and 20.1 for vitality. Statistically significant effects were observed for bodily pain, role physical and role emotional, with major improvement in scores over baseline by 17.2, 22.2 and 23.2, respectively.

At 60 days of treatment, the 20 g dose for the first time showed statistical improvements over baseline in physical function, role physical and bodily pain, which had increases of 7.5, 15.6 and 15.9 over baseline. Vitality showed a non-statistical improvement of 6.9 with the 20 g dose. The 30 g dose at 60 days showed similar findings that were observed at 30 days, with all scores above 5 points and statistically significant increases in role physical, bodily pain and role emotional, and an 18.1 increase in vitality scores over baseline values. The study thus indicated that greater efficacy was observed with the 30 g vs. 20 g dose although improvements were noted in the 20 g dosage with greater length of treatment.

Importantly, the major clinically relevant increases in scores over baseline were maintained over a more prolonged 60-day period of intake signifying no major diminution of effect.

They suggested several reasons for the success - none of which had to do with bacteria or gut permeability

Chronic fatigue syndrome has been associated with higher serum angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) levels, which has been suggested to reflect damage to the vascular endothelium (Lieberman and Bell, 1993). Hence, a part of the efficacy of SKP in chronic fatigue might be related to its demonstrated ACE inhibitory activity (unpublished data), which has been well demonstrated for other fermented soy products (Kinoshita et al., 1993).

Several supplementation trials have indicated that branched chain amino acids (BCAA) can contribute to combat fatigue and to improve mental and physical performance in athletes (De Lorenzo et al., 2003; Blomstrand et al., 1997). Soy protein is one of the best sources of BCAA and fermentation increases the quantity of soluble proteins. Hence, the digestibility and bioavailability of BCAA from soy kefir would be significantly enhanced to provide a significant enhancement in BCAA uptake. An imbalance in the ratio of free tryptophan to BCAA with relatively low blood levels of BCAA has been implicated as a possible cause of acute physiological and psychological fatigue (central fatigue) during exercise (Gastmann and Lehmann, 1998) and the chronic fatigue syndrome (Georgiades et al., 2003).

Amongst the putative bioactive ingredients in SKP are substantial amounts of isoflavones. Soy isoflavones have been shown to decrease inflammation, which recently has been indicated to play an important role for inducing fatigue (Collado-Hidalgo et al., 2006). The half-lives of isoflavones are about 4 to 8 hours (Manach et al., 2004) suggesting that maintenance of effective plasma concentrations can be achieved with regular daily consumption of SKP. In addition to isoflavones, soy kefir likely contains a host of components that may be involved in the medicinal effects including polyphenolic compounds such as lignans, saponins, phytic acid as well as other bioactive molecules such as sphingolipids and branched chain fatty acids, which might exert cumulative biological effects.