Category Archives: Treatment

Unknown's avatar lassesen 8:10 pm on September 29, 2013  

An explanation of why higher dosages of probiotics may be bad

There are several studies where the experimenters tried various dosages of probiotics. The results were interesting because as the dosage increase, there was more intended effect and then suddenly the effect dropped off to almost zero (that is, the probiotics had ZERO effect).

This is important because many CFS people slip into a mentality of “more is better”, and literally overdose on one or more supplements. For probiotics, more is likely not better. Taking 50% more is likely fine, but 100%, 200% or 500% more is likely just throwing money away (of course, we know that all CFS patients are flush with too much money).

I believe a simple explanation of the mechanism that bacteria (probiotics) use may explain the process better.  Probiotics generate a host of chemicals.

  • Some of these chemicals are “purchase orders” to other bacteria to produce more (often these are different species that have learnt to work together).
  • Other chemicals are produced to say “I’m here” to other of the same species.  When this level is low, the bacteria will go into over production (high birth rate). When this level is high, the bacteria will slow or shut down production (low birth rate, or none).

When a large dosage of probiotic is consumed, none of these chemicals may be there and everyone starts reproducing… 15 minutes later, the system is flooded with the chemical and everyone stops reproducing. The bacteria/probiotics effectively triggers it’s own kill switch.

The microbiome is a complex economy. Cooperation happens by chemical signals and the level of the chemicals found. My advise is simple:

  • One probiotic at a time. Preferably a single species when possible.
  •  Start with a low dosages and increase to the recommended. Do not exceed 50% of the recommended dosage.
  • Keep on each probiotics for at least 7 days (10 days is better, 14 days is likely the maximum time before rotating). This also keeps costs in control… and benefit/dollar higher.
  • Daily changing probiotics is likely not good. You are not giving time for colonies to get established.
Unknown's avatar lassesen 2:31 am on September 29, 2013  

GcMAF – Bravo Probiotic – a review

See also this UPDATE on Bravo and Update #2 In 2017, the discoverer has invented a new magic, Rerum, and in videos has trashed this product, see this post.

A friend asked me about this. It is well hyped. My first question is simple:

  • What species are involved?
  • What is the PubMed studies on it?

Often with some products, there is a host of research papers that are presented at conferences (that you may never have heard about). There papers somehow never make it into the peer review journals.  Do I have a little attitude? Caution, is the better term — having seen loved ones burnt in the pass. Ok, so much for the preliminaries… let us see what we can find and summarize.

  • Most of the papers cited on their site is about a chemical, GcMAF, and not a living species of probiotics.
  • GcMAF appears to be able to be manufactured without probiotics (” a small sample of serum from healthy human people to produce large amounts of new second generation GcMAF” [1]
  • GcMAF results in E.Coli being killed off, since CFS patients are low in E.Coli, this is likely not a good thing.
  • I was unable to find a single image of the content label on the web (which I find very unusual)
  • No studies on PubMed, other probiotics have several studies (to several hunderd) each: Mutaflor, Align, Prescript Assist.

Their purchase page is very interesting and should raise alarm bells!
“I understand I will be taking part in a pre clinical trial and I guarantee to provide progress reports every 2 months, from which Immuno Biotech will extract data to publish statistics and research papers while protecting my identity as we always have. I have done my own research into GcMAF elsewhere without relying on you, and my decision to take it is mine alone”

This is not the way that clinical trials are conducted, by any stretch of the imagination.

For $3000, you get

“1 kit contains starter 1, starter 2, probiotic 3 to produce about 2 quarts (2 liters) of final product every week for 1 year”

To which, you will need to spend about $50/week for the collustrum and other items to keep the culture going. Is this a $5,500/year or $15/day yogurt???

I have emailed them for the list of species and strains in their product. So far, only this vague response giving families and not species…

“streptococci, lactobacilli, bifidobacteria, lactococci, yeasts.”

The yeast interest me, because various yeasts have been modified (GMO that is) to produce specific chemicals… could this be the source of GcMAF, i.e. a GMO yeast? I raised that question with them. The last response from them that I received was “We are not allowded[sic] to provide this level of information.”

Unknown's avatar lassesen 1:13 pm on September 27, 2013  

Personal Observations on Cognitive impact of some probiotics

I am currently doing a cycle of different species of probiotics and noted two had significant cognitive impact on me:

  • Align ( Bifidobacterium infantis 35624 ) resulted in a very noticeable shift to being a lot more relaxed and laid back, longer sleeps.
  • Mutaflor (E.Coli Nissle 1917) resulted in more energy, focus, shorter sleep.

As an aside, a friend was finally persuaded to take 20,000 IU/day of Vitamin D3, she reported within 5 days that she is sleeping a lot harder and not dealing with a tendency towards insomnia.

Just three random observations — your mileage may vary.

Unknown's avatar lassesen 9:03 pm on September 22, 2013  

Treating cognitive issues with CFS/FM et al

Today I spent some time with a suffer who had a major cognitive drop from yesterday, this is documenting suggestions we discussed. I wanted to check my notes to confirm my memory.

Neuroprotectives

  • Aswaganda – also improves depression (4 PubMed studies)
  • Boswellia – (3 PubMed studies)
  • D-Ribose (1 PubMed study)
  • Ginger (1 PubMed study)
  • Olive Leaf Extract (1 PubMed study)
  • Piracetam and other nootropics (many studies – used in Europe for strokes)
  • Turmeric  (1 PubMed study)

Antibiotics 

  • Beta-lactam antibiotics (5 PubMed studies)
  • Ceftriaxone (3 PubMed Studies)
  • Rapamycin (8 PubMed Studies)
  • Rifampicin (1 PubMed Study)
  • Tetracyclines (minocycline[Most studies], doxycycline) – hundreds of PubMed studies

Recommended Cocktail

  • D-Ribose (encourages E.Coli also), Minocycline (co-exists with E.Coli Nissle 1917 – Mutaflor), Nootropics, Turmeric, Boswellia, Aswanganda.
Unknown's avatar lassesen 5:02 am on September 20, 2013  

Fibromyalgia and Probiotics

Today I had lunch with a friend with Fibromyalgia(FM) brought on by antibiotics for pneumonia, or the pneumonia itself. It is really impossible to know which is the cause. He was interested in the probiotics approach, and I promise to summarize what we know (from PubMed) on fibromyalgia and probiotics.

What I found on PubMed.com was:

So the bottom line is that this approach has not been investigated for FM – except for a study against RA patients (but not against healthy controls). Doing general google searches found nothing that did not appear to be opinion based on belief.

With this sparse information, we end up looking back at irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), which has had probiotic studies. On PubMed there are 340+ studies where they are cited together.  This leads us to Prescript-Assist and Align as two probiotics that have been shown in studies to be successful. It should be noted that neither contains any Lactobacillus species.