Microbiome Notes

The Microbiome is a figuratively and literally a large topic to contemplate, so I’ll be putting my insights from the experts on to this page.

Here is a good basic video to explain the microbiome.

Erica and Justin Sonnenburg are authors of “The Good Gut.” It has LOTS of information on the microbiome. Here are some insights.

Probiotics might help, but you will have to experiment and see which ones have an effect. They might also help with infections.
Fermented foods – try one at a time and see which you like and what effect each has. I started with three and was having some bad effects – I’m going back to one at a time.

The video below is an overall explanation of some of their studies and especially how and increase in either fiber or fermented foods affect the microbiome.

Results from tests below.

Fermented foods:

Had a 25% increase in microbiotic diversity. From 100 to 125.
The fermented foods only added 3 new species that were already in the fermented foods. . The other 22 new species were not from fermented foods. Fermented foods seems to have an indirect effect on microbiotic diversity.
There was a decrease in inflammatory markers.
Probiotic Study of people with Metabolic Syndrome
Did not see an increase in microbiome diversity.
No difference in inflammatory response.
Insulin, glucose and lipids were unchanged.
One sub-group call “responders” did show improvement in their insulin and trigycerides. They were eating more plants than the non-responders. Conclusion was you need to eat more plants if you are going to benefit from a probiotic.
It’s best to blend fiber rich foods and fermented foods.

Here is a response from Christopher Gardner about the study above.

“We encouraged study participants to eat as much of five things as frequently as possible:

Kimchi

Sauerkraut

Kombucha

Yogurt

Kefir

On their own they found “gutshots” and various pickled (fermented) vegetables to add this list that qualified as having live bacteria.

There was no standard amount for study participants to eat.

If they liked yogurt but not kimchi, then they weren’t required to eat kimchi and ate more yogurt.

On average, they ate ~6 servings/day for 6-10 weeks.

On the hand, that probably sounds like a lot.

On the other hand, we had our study dietitian come up with various combinations of fermented food items that totaled 6 servings, and checked out what the calorie contribution of what this was.

Answer: ~300 calories for a TOTAL of 6 servings.

Keep in mind a typical bottle of kombucha sold in stores qualified as two servings, and only had 50 calories total for the two servings.

A half cup of sauerkraut or kimchi counts as a serving, and these are both relatively low-calorie foods.

300 calories would be 10% of the calories of someone eating 3,000 kcal/day, and 15% of the calories for someone eating 2,000 kcal/day. I suspect the “6 servings a day” sounds more reasonable if you know it was ~10-15% of their calories for the day.”

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