Category Archives: Conditions

Unknown's avatar lassesen 7:56 am on August 26, 2018  

Update of new Studies on my favorite probiotic

In 2014, I did my My favorite probiotic: E.Coli Nissle 1917 (Mutaflor) and today, I discovered there have been a lot more studies done on since this post. Is it still  my favorite?

Please note: I said FAVORITE (for me) and I am not claiming BEST.

mutaflor

Let us see what the new research says:

Bottom Line

Answer is YES — please try finding any other specific strain of any probiotic (except Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG which has been studied more) that has been as well studied with so many significant impacts!

Others appear to agree:

For an excellent history of Mutaflor /E. Coli Nissle 1917, see Insights from 100 Years of Research with Probiotic E. Coli. [2016] and Escherichia coli strain Nissle 1917-from bench to bedside and back: history of a special Escherichia coli strain with probiotic properties.[2016]

  • I’m in the US, so I am forced to use the Canadian Supplier, (thanks to the FDA — because it is effective, they treat it as an experimental drug and thus highly restricted)
  • It is available across Europe and also in Australia

Action Item for US Residents

The reason that it is not available in the US is the FDA and NOT the company. It was sold in the US for a while(2010-12) until the FDA forced it’s removal.

http://2017.igem.org/wiki/images/1/17/NDI_733%2C_E_Coli_Strain_Nissle_1917_and_Mutaflor_from_Medical_Futures_Inc_.pdf

“Section 301(11) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 331(11)) prohibits the introduction or delivery for introduction into interstate commerce of any food (including a dietary supplement) that contains a drug approved under 21 U.S.C. 355, a biological product licensed under 42 U.S.C. 262, or a drug or a biological product for which substantial clinical investigations have been instituted and their existence made public, ”

Write your congressman and senator, asking them to demand the FDA  to grant a waiver for Mutaflor to be sold in the US — just like it is in Australia, Canada and most of Europe. It has been in use for over 100 years. You may wish to copy and paste the PubMed articles above and in the prior post into your email or letter.

Background: https://me-pedia.org/wiki/Mutaflor

 

 

 

 

Unknown's avatar lassesen 8:51 am on August 25, 2018  

An Experience resolving hypersomnia and unrefreshing sleep

I though that I should share a recent person experience.  Recently, I have had a relapse of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome. Technically, I do not have it since it has not lasted 6 months — whatever!

The cause was the same that triggered all prior ones — stress.

I should clarify stress better because is a vague word with many meanings. I have Autism spectrum, which translates for me to challenges with interpersonal interactions.  I have developed a lot of play-acting/conditioned responses/cooping strategies over the years and would fall well into the high functioning autism spectrum.  Stress coming from interpersonal interactions is the trigger — and not general stress. Having a high adrenaline situation is a non-problem for me — so being asked to deliver a massive software product in an unreasonable short period of time is not a problem for me at all. It is some other chemical (other than adrenaline) generated from the interpersonal interactions that is the food for the bad bacteria.

Short list of Symptoms

The first symptoms was going up to 10+ bowel movements a day and night sweats.

The following were seen intermittently this time around:

  • Emotional lapidity
  • Dizziness
  • Slur speech
  • Bouts of depression
  • Excessive tiredness
  • Recurrent sore throat
  • POTS
  • Slowness of thought
  • Heat intolerance

My strategy was simple — use the model that I preach! This meant trying to destabilize the gut intentionally so the bacteria shift that caused above does not stabilize. It also meant to aggressively remove the stress — not a “deal with it”. This translated into alternating weeks doing high dosages of:

  • Antivirals, antibiotic herbs: some examples at every meal taking several capsules each of:
    • Olive Leaf
    • Artemisinin
    • Tulsi
    • Haritaki
    • Monolaurin
    • Triphala
    • With items to breakdown biofilms and improve penetration
      • NAC
      • EDTA
      • Serrapetase
      • Lumbrokinease
      • Nattokinease
      • Bromelain
  • Probiotics – whatever was at hand but changing each week – it did not matter what, destabilization was the goal. Typically at least 100 BCFU at each meal
    • Bacillus
    • Lactobacillus
    • Bifidobacterium

Needless to say, I needed to take sick time and work from home days because of the herx/die off . Most of the above symptoms stopped appearing intermittently. 🙂

Brain Fog was eliminated by Neem

Happenstance had it that a study on brain fog and d-lactic acid crossed my screen. I checked up for items that would reduce the bacteria associated with it, and went to 3 “00” capsules of Neem with each meal (we make our own from organic neem powder we buy in bulk) . Within a few days the brain fog and other cognitive issues were fading rapidly. In the past, minocycline was the magic bullet for brain fog for me.

Hypersomnia and non-refreshing sleep appeared

The model says that there is a consortium of bacteria involved, with subsets creating certain symptoms.  Think of a criminal group — one group handles dope, another group obtains protection money, another group smuggle tobacco, etc.  You may shut down one of the operations and jail everyone involved — but the others continue.

I found that my sleep went 40-60% more than usual (up to 14 hours). This was easily tracked by my watch, an old Pebble smartwatch. Instead of starting the day awake and alert, I felt like I had gotten totally wasted drinking the prior day. The polite term would be non-refreshing sleep. This persisted for 2 weeks during which time I was heavy on the antivirals, antibiotic herbs.  At the end of that cycle, I decided to try a simple combination of mutually-support probiotics different than the ones above. A directed sniping instead of the broad shotgun approach with probiotics above.

The pair of probiotics were taken three times a day:

  • Symbioflor-2 (a collection of E.Coli probiotics) from Germany – 18 drops
  •  Bioflorin®  (Enterococcus faecium SF68  — originally classified as Streptococcus faecium SF68;)  from Switzerland – 2 capsules, 150 million CFU

Within a hour, I could feel something changed. Energy levels seemed to improve. That night, I slept much less. The following night, I was almost back to normal sleep patterns. And, I awoke fresh and alert — ready to take on the day. 

I will run hot for periods of the night with night sweats, so not 100% recovered.  Night sweats are my dominant symptoms now — that I can deal work with.

Bottom Line

The first question is simple — why did I not get uBiome or Thryve done before starting? The answer is simple — it would take too long to get the results. I perceived that the dysfunction was likely unstable and prone to fluctuations (since symptoms fluctured!).

My best ‘probe’ was to see if something caused die off or herx. If it did, I know that it was effective in controlling some abnormal overgrowth. If I turn lobster red after taking 500 mgs of regular niacin, that indicated that lots of toxins from dead bacteria was in my system (even if I did not herx). If I no longer get a niacin flush then it was time to move on to other things. It was also another indicator of progress.

Where I got my supplies — I am in the US.

  • https://www.paulsmarteurope.com/symbioflor-2-tropfen-drops-50ml/
  • For bioflorin, I recall that we eventually found a european pharmacy that would send it to us.  If you have friends or family in Europe, that may be the easiest route.
    • I have emailed customerservice@germanapotheke.com (Paul’s mart above) asking if they would included it in their catalog. The more people that email and ask them, the more likely it would be added.
    • An alternative:  https://www.paulsmarteurope.com/symbioflor-1-tropfen-drops-50-ml/ is Enterococcus faecium DSM 16440 and a serving (12 drops) is 10-45 million CFU. Bioflorin capsules (Enterococcus faecium SF68)  are  75 million CFU each.

Source of the stress has been removed, and I am intentionally targeting a low stress situation for the next year…. I need to make sure that a healthy stabilization happens.

It looks like I will no longer need to take a cup full of pills around each meal. I will keep monitoring myself closely.

Experiment with lots of variations!

The bottom line is to have a plan and keep to it. There is great variability in the bacteria, in the above case, it was only after repeated weeks of eliminating bad bacteria (until there was no niacin flush) and then hitting it with the right good bacteria that success happened.

If the bad bacteria were still there, the good bacteria could have been quickly eliminated with the resulting “Nope — does not work” conclusion.

Unknown's avatar lassesen 10:28 pm on August 22, 2018  

A case study of a fecal transplant for CFS

Fecal transplants to remove a single bad bacteria like Peptoclostridium difficile, more commonly known by it’s old name as Clostridium difficile have been very successful.  When it comes to a syndicate of bad bacteria which seems to be the case with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, the story that I have heard time and time again from correspondants is simple:

  • Almost immediate remission
  • Remission disappears around 6 months.

Standard medical advice after a fecal matter transplant is usually “Do not take any probiotics” — I am in strong general agreement because people will usually try off the shelf probiotics. In the list below, the common off the shelf probiotics are on the avoid list – confirming this general advice for this person. There is evidence suggesting that very specific probiotics (not always easy to get) may be of significant benefit.

A reader share a before and after several month lab tests (after symptoms started to reappear). Unfortunately they were from different labs so it was not possible to do an easy side by side. Only two items were reported on both. One went from low to high, but the other was reported as very high on both:

Shigella/Escherichia

There are good and bad members of this group, and we should likely assume that there are robust bad ones that have made a comeback.

 

This becomes a challenge…. I suspect that normal Escherichia Coli (like Symbioflor-2) will likely be eliminated by these. Given the history of the very robust good Escherichia Coli Nissle 1917 (Mutaflor),   a trial for 1-2 weeks should be discussed.

Other Suggestions

We have a before and an after lab. The return of symptoms suggests that the prior syndicate of bacteria is returning.  Fortunately, on the Other Labs Analysis, we have

which allows me to enter both test results at the same time and get a list of suggestions.

There were several probiotics that were clean suggestions (i.e. no negative impact known on any shift):

There were also some clean avoid advice, do not take:

And several with far more harm than good being calculated, do not take

There are many which are very unclear if they will help more than hurt. I would generally advise against them unless there are no clean ones. The numbers are weighted by the number of studies — NOT the magnitude of effect (almost impossible to find those numbers for  most things)

uncertain

Prebiotics – AVOID!

Again for these specific results, the engine found no prebiotic was safe to take. This point may be missed by physicians…

prebiotic

Supplements

The following are clean suggestions — most of the B vitamins and melatonin

vitamin

But do not take:

Diet is usually a pain because they are massive collections of positive and negative foods (and spices).

Bottom Line

The above suggestions are based on a specific person’s results using two different lab reports. If you click thru on the linked items above, you  will be taken to the studies the suggestion was based on, for example for triphala impact on Escherichia.

trip

Prior Posts on FMT

Again, this is an education post only. All changes in probiotics, supplements and diet should be discussed with your knowledgeable medical professional before starting.

Unknown's avatar lassesen 7:49 pm on August 13, 2018  

A non-antibiotic proposal for the Jadin Protocol

A reader asked an interesting and challenging question.

“After a pretty long and exhausting search I’ve almost given up on finding a doc that is willing to attempt the Jadin protocol. It seems several “Lyme Literate” docs in and around Los Angeles have been publicly reprimanded or fined for continuous antibiotic use, forcing many underground or potentially out of practice because I can’t even contact many.

I’m still suffering greatly, but unfortunately trying to use findings from your newer site and my ubiome results haven’t yielded any improvement. I’m wondering if you would still recommend, with all of the knowledge you’ve gained over the last 4.5 years, a similar protocol as the one outlined at the end of this post:”

The Jadin protocol using rotating antibiotics. I have done some prior posts on it (and it was critical for one remission)

Step One — connecting some dots

The link between d-lactic acid and brain fog was recently published.

I had written about this in the past:

A recent experience cause me to suspect the following sequence in the onset of some CFS patients.

  • Something triggers an increase of d-lactic acid producing bacteria
  • The body goes into a lactic acidosis state
    • Bacteria that cannot tolerate this decrease
    • Bacteria that tolerates this increases
  • The body now has an altered microbiome, one that favors a lactic acidosis like environment.

What does the literature say?

  • “Higher levels of d-lactate producing bacteria (such as Streptococcus and Enterococcus) have been identified in stool samples from patients with ME/CFS “ [2017]
  • “Microbiological analyses were used to detect the presence of D-lactate-producing Lactobacillus species in the stool samples. ” [2018]

Which bacteria?

From Probiotics, D–Lactic acidosis, oxidative stress and strain specificity [2017]

lactic

“The principal source of D-lactate production in the human gut is due to Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteri species. E. coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Candida freundii also produce significant quantities of D-lactate while producing minimal amounts of L-lactate.” [2015]

To which we add:

  • Enterococcus,
  • Streptococcus [2009]

Jadin’s Antibiotics

Looking at tetracycline impacted bacteria, we see it decreases:

  • Lactobacillus
  • Streprococcus

She also uses Macrolides which impacts bacteria, we see it decreases

  • Bifidobacterium
  • Escherichia coli

Is this the under-pinning of the treatment success? If so, then the herbal version would seek to reduce d-lactic acid producing bacteria just like the antibiotic version does.

So for Lactobacillus we see the following decreases it

And a lot of things increases it!

And for Bifidobacterium, we see the following decreases it

And a lot of things increases it!

Bottom Line:

I am inspired to work on producing a page to determine the ‘best’ non-prescription match for prescription drugs.  By best – I means that which inhibits similar bacteria.

My manual review suggests the following.

REMEMBER — if you take these AND then have a diet and supplements that encourages lactobacillus, etc growth — you may not seen any effect.

I plan to work on writing code to organize all of the information and produce a short summary for the brain fogged.

I have also added lactic acid to the End Product analysis

This is an education post to facilitate discussing this approach with your medical professionals. It is not medical advice for the treatment of any medical condition. Always consult with your medical professional before doing any  changes of diet, supplements or activity. Some items cites may interfere with prescription medicines.

Unknown's avatar lassesen 3:40 pm on August 12, 2018  

Other Labs and Suggestions Updated

The site http://microbiomeprescription.azurewebsites.net has been evolving with the addition of more and more data and features — often put together quickly. Sometime if is time to redo a section.  I have redone “Other Labs”, including a prototype of where I would like to take suggestions.

If you click on http://microbiomeprescription.com/Labs you will see the labs currently supported.

When you click on one, say the newest one: GanzImmun Diagnostics AG Befundbericht, you will see the bacteria in the lab with a drop down for you to enter the amount of shift reported.

newlab

Enter the values, and click submit. You will be taken to the new Suggestions page.

The suggestions have a section for tuning the recommendations.

Filter

These controls your suggestions. For example, with the above

sug1

Changing to probiotics only:

sug2

Over to antibiotis

sug3.PNG

Bottom Line

Once I have tuned these suggestions a bit, I will bring this filter over to the Ubiome/Thryve analysis.

I have tried to make the text in the drop-downs, self explanatory. If there are issues, please email.

Also, if you see a missing feature for filtering suggestions — please also email.

Not all options are working at the moment (Frequency is not), but should be later this week. I want to do some more testing. See http://microbiomeprescription.com/Library/Tree for the frequencies that will be used in this filtering.