This article conflates diversity with gut health. It has not been proven that more diversity is necessarily better[1]. In fact, in infants a less diverse b. infantis dominant environment is probably advantageous[2].
If you're having a baby, the best thing you can do is to supplement b. infantis, especially the robust strain from Evolve Biosystems[3]. The Hadza have more b. infantis[4] which kicks off a set of immune host interactions that have positive effects on inflammation during the critical period after birth[5].
"After around 3 years, the gut microbiota stabilises retaining relative proportions of taxa with adaptations to composition harder to impose,"[6] so I doubt it's diet as much as it is vertical transmission of the right kinds of bacteria that set the infants up for a lifetime of healthy immune response.
Also, never ever ever do they mention anything about human genetics. There are people who carry more hunter-gatherer traits than others. So who is this diet really for?
Genetics matter. I am a FUT2 non-secretor and this effects my gut health tremendously. I had IBD-D for years before I found this out. Before then if I took any pre or pro-biotics it was a nightmare, but that was supposed to be the healthy thing to do.
So sorry, but I do not listen to any nutritional research anymore that over generalizes a genetically diverse population.
Lifestyle is more than just diet, there's the activity level, sun exposure, and different things in the water. I think we should just start saying that gray cubicles are bad for the microbiome and roll with that.
You'd have to uproot how the western world works to get us back to how we evolved to be healthy and survive on this planet. Finding time to get your 8 miles of walking a day in would be hard enough. We probably spend way too much time thinking a day as well with the 8 hour day. Think about how often a white collar worker does nothing but sit all day and gets home exhausted from the mental drain and stress: that can't be very healthy and is really far off from early modern human behavior as well. Stuff like a deadline you are stressing over is a very modern concept too, probably takes years off your life but what do you know we live by them and pretend like we are being productive and healthy while burning the wick at both ends.
By the time you actually get the time to live like how you are supposed to live, you are old, in retirement, fragile from a lifetime of inactivity, and can't make up for your years lost of good physical health that you had to spend at a desk growing lethargic instead.
In what sense are hunter-gatherer diets "more diverse"? Are they eating a lot of different things? Is the food they're eating simply better on a microbiome improving level regardless of whether they have more variation or less, or is it more to do with preparation/cooking?
If you look at any modern supermarket and strip out all the processed junk, you’re left with a few types of meat, few types of vegetables and maybe some mushrooms. Most of our dishes are a combination of maybe 25 items of which 6,7 are heavily used.
There is a super interesting interview with Jeff Leach, a guy who actually went to live with hunter-gatherers, studying how they live and how it influences their microbiome:
Sounds like a large part of the reason for their gut diversity seem to be from not just what they eat, but how they eat it (taking in lots of dirt along with their food).
This is a generalization/simplification on my part, but yes.
Hunter gatherers at a minimum are eating different foods throughout the year as seasons change, but even within seasons as different foods become available.
As another commenter mentioned read “against the grain” by James c Scott. Also “eat on the wild side” is another. Today we may eat 20 different kinds of plants. Hunter gatherers ate somewhere like 80-120 different kinds.
“ The team suspects chronic inflammation in the gut could trigger such damage, creating a selective pressure for those genes, says study co-author Matthew Olm, a microbiologist at Stanford. “If you have a state of chronic inflammation, it would make sense that your gut microbiome has to adapt,” he says. These genes were not detected in the Hadza microbiomes.”
Think we are learning that a major key to overall health is minimizing the state of inflammation. Poor eating choices, lack of exercise, stressful job / life in general many urban environments tend to promote lifestyles where you could live in a state id constant inflammation.
Correct me if I’m wrong, since I’m not an expert in this area, but I think lowering inflammation is not really the goal? Inflammation as I understand it is just a marker for stress (in the broadest sense of the word). I understand that inflammation is the body attempting to heal from said stress. So really, the goal is to remove chronic stressors, of which you listed many. I think you got most of the big ones, maybe missing toxic chemical exposure in food/air/water depending on locale, and mental stress due to a lack of societal cohesion, across a lot of the US at least.
> The analysis suggests that the average Hadza adult gut microbiome contains 730 species (standard error [SE] of 14.5 species), compared with 277 species (SE of 32 species) in the average adult Californian gut microbiome, 317 species (SE of 32 species) for the Nepali foragers, and 436 species (SE of 106 species) for the Nepali agrarians.
All of the commenters so far (and the article's title) seem to assume that this is causative of good health. Why is that?
I'm aware that fecal transplants can help cure C diff infections.
Do we have randomized, placebo-controlled evidence that suggests that gut biodiversity is causative of (and not just associated with other lifestyle features causing) good health? It's hard for me to imagine a good way to design such a study.
I thought the rigorously performed research regarding eg probiotics had mostly been disappointing.
Is there any reason to think that food that is good for human health would not also be good for gut flora health, thus heavily confounding much of the non-interventional research?
Study after study fail to disprove the hypothesis that gut microbiome diversity is a strong correlate with longevity.
Here's a meta study for you:
Here we introduce the MicrobiomeHD database, which includes 28 published case–control gut microbiome studies spanning ten diseases. We perform a cross-disease meta-analysis of these studies using standardized methods. We find consistent patterns characterizing disease-associated microbiome changes.
What more do people want? Why is this something people fight?
There seem to be windows where bacterial populations are in flux until the microbiome stabilizes around 3 years of age. It is difficult to modify the microbiome after that. I think our models have to shift so that we prioritize early intervention, especially for those at risk for dysbiosis (like premature and c-section babies).
> Yet another unambiguous data point that modern life is measurably worse for your body
I’m not sure this is the takeaway.
I feel there are many unambiguous data points that modern life is measurably better for your body.
Infant mortality rate. Average life expectancy. The mortality rate for mothers during pregnancy. The mortality rate for random injuries (cuts, breaks, etc.). Death by food poisoning. Quality of life, and mortality rates, for mental and physical disabilities.
It seems like, in nearly any circumstance, the modern human body is at considerably less risk than our ancestors.
But there are trade-offs and missteps. It seems we’ve tossed the baby with the bath water in some cases. And getting the baby back further improves modern life.
I don't think this is right, hunter-gather diets were largely restricted to the area they lived, you can't across the board call them diverse. It depends if you lived in an area that was blessed with diversity, or if you were forced to eat the same seeds/nuts constantly.
Malnutrition plagued the Neanderthals by the way. We have skeletons and teeth that show disruption to growth. There's evidence of some groups of gatherers that subsisted on local flora that caused excessive amounts of tooth decay. Modern living results in way healthier people (for the most part).
I doubt this is true if you factor in the positive effects of medical care, safer living conditions, sanitation, etc. that are available in modern developed countries.
This gives them an advantage in the supply of material for fecal microbiota transplant bacteriotherapy. Unless they use the proceeds to stop eating like hunger-gatherers, which seems to be the usual path.
I know some modern Californians who eat like hunter-gatherers. I wonder if they might be able to monetize their gut flora.
Fermented foods, psyllium husk, non-strict intermittent fasting and strength training will get you like 80% of the way there while still being able to enjoy sitting at your computer for 8+ hours a day.
This is the sort of advice people need to hear more of. Almost none of us are ever going to realistically adopt a hunter-gatherer lifestyle again. We need more data on how to get close to that within the confines of modern life. There's some great material out there now, but only very recently.
I personally really enjoyed this discussion on this between Andrew Huberman and Justin Sonnenberg (Professor of Microbiology & Immunology at Stanford University): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouCWNRvPk20
I wonder what the result looks like if you test people who eat produce from a home garden or if it's typically not enough to make a difference and you'd have to live outdoors. Similarly, people still eat significant amounts of foraged berries and mushrooms in some places - it does not have to be all industrial even if you live in a city.
A forager friend of mine has just completed participating in a gut biome study (in conjunction with the UK Zoe project), where he and other foragers have been only eating wild foraged food for 3 months. A pretty good achievement for him (although he lost about 20kg over the 3 months). He blogged daily photos of what he ate on insta: https://www.instagram.com/rural_courses/
[+] [-] CrHn3|2 years ago|reply
If you're having a baby, the best thing you can do is to supplement b. infantis, especially the robust strain from Evolve Biosystems[3]. The Hadza have more b. infantis[4] which kicks off a set of immune host interactions that have positive effects on inflammation during the critical period after birth[5].
"After around 3 years, the gut microbiota stabilises retaining relative proportions of taxa with adaptations to composition harder to impose,"[6] so I doubt it's diet as much as it is vertical transmission of the right kinds of bacteria that set the infants up for a lifetime of healthy immune response.
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5103657/
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6177445/
3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7352178/
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9894631/
5. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286742...
6. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6950569/
[+] [-] dmbche|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FollowingTheDao|2 years ago|reply
Genetics matter. I am a FUT2 non-secretor and this effects my gut health tremendously. I had IBD-D for years before I found this out. Before then if I took any pre or pro-biotics it was a nightmare, but that was supposed to be the healthy thing to do.
So sorry, but I do not listen to any nutritional research anymore that over generalizes a genetically diverse population.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ismej201464
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9866411/
[+] [-] joker_minmax|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asdff|2 years ago|reply
By the time you actually get the time to live like how you are supposed to live, you are old, in retirement, fragile from a lifetime of inactivity, and can't make up for your years lost of good physical health that you had to spend at a desk growing lethargic instead.
[+] [-] bmitc|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beezlebroxxxxxx|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mstipetic|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jinjin2|2 years ago|reply
https://chrisryan.substack.com/p/307-jeff-leach-microbiome-e...
Sounds like a large part of the reason for their gut diversity seem to be from not just what they eat, but how they eat it (taking in lots of dirt along with their food).
[+] [-] comte7092|2 years ago|reply
This is a generalization/simplification on my part, but yes.
Hunter gatherers at a minimum are eating different foods throughout the year as seasons change, but even within seasons as different foods become available.
[+] [-] 4b11b4|2 years ago|reply
When I graze in the backyard... I don't brush off all the dirt. If there are small bugs on a leaf, I might eat em.
[+] [-] CrHn3|2 years ago|reply
Their microbiome is more diverse, with "23.4% of microbial species detected in the Hadza infants represent[ing] novel species"[2].
1. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(23)00597-4
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9894631/
[+] [-] doitLP|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] codersfocus|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2OEH8eoCRo0|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roody15|2 years ago|reply
Think we are learning that a major key to overall health is minimizing the state of inflammation. Poor eating choices, lack of exercise, stressful job / life in general many urban environments tend to promote lifestyles where you could live in a state id constant inflammation.
[+] [-] lumb63|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xenonite|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woeirua|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freitzkriesler2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eganist|2 years ago|reply
halfway there
[+] [-] lucidguppy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bmitc|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] n8henrie|2 years ago|reply
I'm aware that fecal transplants can help cure C diff infections.
Do we have randomized, placebo-controlled evidence that suggests that gut biodiversity is causative of (and not just associated with other lifestyle features causing) good health? It's hard for me to imagine a good way to design such a study.
I thought the rigorously performed research regarding eg probiotics had mostly been disappointing.
Is there any reason to think that food that is good for human health would not also be good for gut flora health, thus heavily confounding much of the non-interventional research?
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|2 years ago|reply
Here's a meta study for you:
Here we introduce the MicrobiomeHD database, which includes 28 published case–control gut microbiome studies spanning ten diseases. We perform a cross-disease meta-analysis of these studies using standardized methods. We find consistent patterns characterizing disease-associated microbiome changes.
What more do people want? Why is this something people fight?
[1]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-01973-8
[+] [-] CrHn3|2 years ago|reply
There seem to be windows where bacterial populations are in flux until the microbiome stabilizes around 3 years of age. It is difficult to modify the microbiome after that. I think our models have to shift so that we prioritize early intervention, especially for those at risk for dysbiosis (like premature and c-section babies).
[+] [-] jinjin2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Biologist123|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r3trohack3r|2 years ago|reply
I’m not sure this is the takeaway.
I feel there are many unambiguous data points that modern life is measurably better for your body.
Infant mortality rate. Average life expectancy. The mortality rate for mothers during pregnancy. The mortality rate for random injuries (cuts, breaks, etc.). Death by food poisoning. Quality of life, and mortality rates, for mental and physical disabilities.
It seems like, in nearly any circumstance, the modern human body is at considerably less risk than our ancestors.
But there are trade-offs and missteps. It seems we’ve tossed the baby with the bath water in some cases. And getting the baby back further improves modern life.
[+] [-] chomp|2 years ago|reply
Malnutrition plagued the Neanderthals by the way. We have skeletons and teeth that show disruption to growth. There's evidence of some groups of gatherers that subsisted on local flora that caused excessive amounts of tooth decay. Modern living results in way healthier people (for the most part).
[+] [-] jandrese|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1970-01-01|2 years ago|reply
I checked. It's ambiguous:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet#Health_effect...
[+] [-] fasterik|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hirundo|2 years ago|reply
I know some modern Californians who eat like hunter-gatherers. I wonder if they might be able to monetize their gut flora.
[+] [-] yeouch|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aromasin|2 years ago|reply
I personally really enjoyed this discussion on this between Andrew Huberman and Justin Sonnenberg (Professor of Microbiology & Immunology at Stanford University): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouCWNRvPk20
Huberman's prior episode is also great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15R2pMqU2ok
Basic takeaway was low sugar fermented food 4-6 times daily. Doable for almost everyone, palate aside.
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|2 years ago|reply
The Gut Microbes of African Hunter-Gatherers
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7599422
[+] [-] tuukkah|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisbuc|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pj_mukh|2 years ago|reply
Like a multi-vitamin that just boosts the diversity in the gut?
Are processed diets changing the physical makeup (thermal?, acidic?) of the gut as well and therefore a pill won’t work?
[+] [-] cesarvarela|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Y_Y|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OldManRyan|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aerbil313|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]