Studies have shown there are differences between depression from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and classic depression as well as the microbiome findings:

An older model that I have used has been hypoxia a.k.a. Altitude Sickness. The reason were originally the overlap of many symptoms between CFS and Altitude Sickness. After that, I was tested for Hypercoagulation by Hemex Labs (Coagulation specialists) and found that I was — in fact hypercoagulated. For some blood draws the nurse ended up trying 8 different sites before they could get enough blood! Talk about thick blood!

A study at that time found 85% of CFS/ME patients were hypercoagulated with many improving greatly from low dosage heparin.

And thick blood means slow moving blood and thus the delivery rate of oxygen goes down.

Observed behaviors and personal anecdotes suggest that the initial mood experienced at altitude is euphoria, followed by depression. With time, individuals may also become quarrelsome, irritable, anxious, and apathetic (Van Liere and Stickney, 1963). Unfortunately, although disturbances in emotional control have been noticed at altitude for decades, there are few quantitative studies assessing mood changes at altitude.

The Effect of Altitude on Cognitive Performance and Mood States

So I have low oxygen levels – What can I do?

The ‘obvious’ suggestions rarely work. An example:

• Oxygen tank:
  • Will not work for slow blood. The blood may already be saturated with oxygen
  • Will not work if there are hemoglobin issues. The blood cannot carry more

IMHO there is not one universal solution, the following are possibly (depends on the person’s actual conditions)

• Items that improves blood flow (speed of delivery)
• Items that “clears out the sewers” (aka blood vessels)
  • Nattokinase
  • Lumbrokinase
  • Serrapeptase
  • Bromelain
• Nootropics
  • Piracetam (my favorite is Piracetam + heparin cocktail)
• Other Supplements (see this post https://cfsremission.com/2015/09/08/thick-blood-supplements-for-cfs/ )
  • Alpha Lipoic Acid
  • Boswelia Gum
  • Centella Asiatica [Gotu kola]
  • Coenzyme Q10
  •  Ginseng
  • Grape Seed Extract
  • Licorice
  • Turmeric especially with black pepper added in
• Vascular Dilators (expand the size of the blood vessels) see this site for more items
  • Niacin (regular – aka flushing, aka, itches like…)
  • Garlic
  • Cocoa
  • Magnesium
  • L-Arginine
  • Coenzyme Q10
• Testing for and treating coagulation issues, see this post: https://cfsremission.com/2018/05/20/post-m-options-for-testing-for-coagulation-issues-defects/

Bottom Line

The above looks at items that in terms of a delivery network could be described below

• Increases the speed on the highways (blood flow)
• Adds more lanes to the highways ( Vascular Dilators )
• Repairs the road surface (120km/hr on a pothole road does not do it)
• Increase the load each trunk can carry
• Improves the routing and utilization of each truck (nootropics)

The goods being delivered is oxygen, the road system is your body.

I have added two new pages:

• Very Strong Association (Just 1 Symptom is associated)
• Strong Association (A pair of symptoms is associated)

When you click on the name, you will be taken to the numbers used (keeps everyone honest!)

Given the issues they have with the corporate management and governance, some readers asked if their apparent quality has dropped.

Quality means the number of bacteria detected in a sample. This is a valid question — quality control and processing may have taken a hit. Since most of these processes are heavily automated… I do not expect any major changes. Since I have access to 800+ ubiome done samples, I thought that I would take a peak.

Reducing our scope to just 2019, we no loss of quality and the same upward trend

Bottom Line

No evidence of loss of quality

This crossed my news feed today. NOTE: the accuracy of their test results is not in question. The interpretation and how they choose to do analysis of their data is the issue. Most of this is focused on the data that they used to claim that SmartGut was accurate.

The science behind uBiome’s products is flawed, according to insiders and outside experts. They say that raises new questions about the company’s future. ….. uBiome built a big set of data based on the human microbiome, but the data was flawed in ways that risk making uBiome’s tests unreliable….uBiome confirmed problems with the data and said it’s conducting an internal review.

That test, called SmartGut, would become uBiome’s biggest money-maker, according to 11 former employees. It was designed to tell people about the health of their guts and their risk of diseases like irritable bowel syndrome. ….the dataset Bik described included data from 45 minors and at least one non-human….. If a customer’s levels were on par with the results in the database, the report told them so, and gave them a “wellness score” out of 100. If their levels diverged from the database, the report noted it, and suggested a possible link to illness. In fine print at the bottom of each report, it read, “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.” Scientists and clinicians have questioned the utility of such a test.The new test was designed for adults, according to uBiome’s website, but relied on the same volunteer database that powered the Explorer test, according to 21 former employees. Only now, if the data in the analysis was off, it could have clinical repercussions: healthy people might be told they were sick, while sick people might be told they were healthy.

Adult patients who took the SmartGut test on a doctor’s recommendation might now use it to make medical decisions.

Consider one issue, they said: poop samples from infants and pets had likely been included in the data, which was then used to create the adults-only test.

People who’d taken the drugs would often fail to disclose they’d done so, they said, because they believed enough time had passed for their effects to disappear. But antibiotics are thought to impact the microbiome for up to a year. One ex-employee who worked on the science likened taking a uBiome test to pseudoscience. “It’s like going to a really expensive homeopathic doctor,” the person said…..

In other words, people sampled their poop at home, in private, and then answered a series of key questions that included asking whether they were healthy or sick. If the answers were wrong or incomplete, it could provide a distorted sketch of the microbiome, insiders and outside experts have said. Volunteers could have been sick at the time they submitted their samples. They could also have taken antibiotics, which can distort the microbiome. ….The three ex-employees said the babies were easily identifiable based on the high presence in their samples of Bifidobacteria, a strain of microbe that’s specially suited to breaking down the ingredients in breast milk. Another handful of the samples likely belong to people’s pets, said Bik and two of the other ex-employees, pointing to data in the paper which shows strains of bacteria at levels not found in humans.

https://www.businessinsider.com/ubiome-poop-testing-startup-problems-science-microbiome-2019-8

Bottom line

The reports on the microbiome are accurate. Charts and values based on their samples is suspect.

As a side note, the database at http://microbiomeprescription.azurewebsites.net/ is slightly bigger than uBiome reference set cited above, is open data (so people can slice and dice as they wish – i.e. exclude samples with high bifidobacterium (babies) ), and very likely much better data quality. Also, the preferred analysis path is using non-parametric approaches which I believe for microbiome data is superior to the parametric approaches that uBiome appear to have used. …. is Citizen Science superior to commercial Science in this scenario????

The first one is quiet and behind the scene. Ubiome reports E.Coli as it’s cousin Kluyvera (genus). I have updated the modifiers to apply E.Coli modifiers to Kluyvera (adding some 1300 more facts for the AI Engine to use). Most people will not see a change of suggestions due to this.

I have added in the ability to include common bacteria that you are missing into the analysis. This is on the advance page.

Use caution with this — the microbiome is a complex society. If you look at cities around the world you may find that 95% have homeless people. Trying to get homeless people for your town with no homeless people there — may not be the best path forward and have side-effects on your low crime rates.