ThinkGutBacteria

I came to the hygiene hypothesis/importance of exposure to certain microbes until well after PANDAS. (Interesting assumption, though.) I discovered the fact that insufficient exposure to certain microbes is critical for proper immune function after it was too late. Remember, the window for exposure is in utero or first year of life. Anyway, we seem to be managing (so far, knock wood) with probiotics/prebiotics alone. No antibiotics, IVIG, coQ10, etc., yet. Although, I'm glad to know they're there if/when required. Probiotics are not sufficient to cure but they may be sufficient to prevent.

RIGHT! Given the context of this discussion board, we definitely can't overlook autoimmune-driven arthritis (like AS)! See also: Out of joint: new insights into the role of commensal gut bacteria in autoimmune arthritis http://www.nature.com/mi/journal/v3/n6/full/mi201056a.html

We've had good results with chamomile tea. Like lemon balm, chamomile is a naturally good source of luteolin, a flavonoid that reduces brain inflammation and may improve motor function (read: tics).

A 6-minute lecture on anxiety, appetite, and other familiar behaviors that can be explained by gut bacteria. They've corrected the communication deficit in autism by adding the bacterium, Bacteroides fragilis. Lecturer: Elaine Hsiao, a post-doc at Cal Tech.

Beware-joint damage does not equal pain. Most people show signs of the same joint wear-and-tear as people with joint pain, yet they have no pain. There was a paper published in 1994 by a doctor (M. Jensen) and her colleagues in the New England Journal of Medicine. They performed MRIs on about 98 people who had no history of back pain. The researchers found normal discs in only 36% of the people. Everyone else had bulges, herniations of various kinds, and so on, and yet no pain. That's the kind of information that doctors in this country totally ignore. Instead, I recommend that you look at your SLEEP. If you have joint pain, cold hands and feet, low blood pressure, fatigue, you might have something called upper-airway resistance syndrome. (http://www.caring.com/articles/uars-may-be-why-you-are-so-tired) We heal our bodies in deep sleep, which you don't get if you have UARS or sleep apnea, or otherwise can't breathe easily. Even if you've been in bed 8 hours/night and think you sleep fine.

Eesh. Is she sleeping better? Less anxious or aggressive, anything like that?

I had a site I preferred for homeopathic interactions, side effects, etc and I lost it in a computer crash. Now I cannot for the life of me remember who it was. Do you have a favorite site? I just found this one again, I think this maybe was the one I lost: http://www.umm.edu/altmed/ For drugs, I try to find its full prescribing information or its monograph and get the info from the horse's mouth. Never go to a drug's website. All of the useful information about the drug is available from non-commercial sources. A drug website's primary mission is to deliver its marketing messages. If it's a dot com, they're just trying to sell you something. Arthitis.com, for example is a Pfizer website trying to sell you their pain drug, it is not trying to educate you about arthritis. If it was, it would have to tell you that, as an NSAID, it relieves pain as well as--not better than--any other NSAID, like Advil, and confers no safety advantage. Here's an example of a full PI (Augmentin's) from the FDA. http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2008/050575s037550597s044050725s025050726s019lbl.pdf The Full Prescribing Information (PI) is a summary of the clinical trial data about a drug. Drug companies are not obligated to report ALL of a drug's trial data to healthcare providers or the public (which is criminal), but at least there's no marketing crap in it.

I hate WebMD, but that information is probably correct and it was a very good idea of yours to post it. WebMD pulls info like that from reliable-enough sources like NIH and large professional associations. I used to work at place like WebMD. They're very biased to Big Pharma's marketing messages because that's who butters their bread, so to speak.

SF Mom, I love the idea of butyrate. That's gotta help. What supp do you use?

Terms can get confusing but glutamine is food for cells of the intestine. Much of it gets metabolized into things like citrulline, proline, alanine, glycine, and arginine. It does seem to raise gut glutathione levels in rodent models (studies on mice and rats). As for studies in humans, some show it can improve the outcome of gut infections, ostensibly by improving leaky gut caused by microbe toxins, although studies in people with Crohn's disease (a permanent gut infection, of sorts) have been disappointing. Glutamine's efficacy seems to depend on the disease you're treating.

Just remember it has a bit of caffeine in it too. (The decaf process removes some of tea's polyphenols and would likely reduce the benefit, so I don't recommend decaf. Or milk, for that matter. Casein proteins bind up many of tea's healthful polyphenols too. Honey's okay, thank goodness.)

Let look at a case of "genetic predisposition" to asthma, which many consider to be an allergic disease. Humans have a certain receptor on a particular kind of T cell (immune cell) that helps drive allergy-style inflammation. The receptor is called TIM-1. People make various versions of TIM-1, some versions predispose them to getting asthma. Some strongly protect them from getting asthma. As it turns out, scientists at Stanford University found ten years ago that the variant strongly associated with protection is also a really good receptor for the hepatitis A virus (HepA). Having this variety of the TIM-1 gene only protected people from getting asthma if they had been exposed to HepA. Epidemiologically, HepA infection is associated with a reduced risk of developing asthma and certain allergies, and because the incidence of HepA infection has been significantly reduced in industrialized countries over the past 30 years, the discovery of a genetic interaction between HAV and TIM-1 provides a nice example of molecular genetic evidence for the hygiene hypothesis. If you don't "buy" the hypothesis, how would you explain exposure to HepA protecting against asthma in people with the version of the TIM-1 gene that vigorously binds the virus? There are many many examples of this kind of evidence.

The hygiene theory fits this beautifully. There is no place with MORE asthma, for example, than inner cities, which are also typically crawling with "germs." But the whole hypothesis hinges on the TYPE of germ. There are NO traditional farm soil microbes in inner cities, for example. In fact, as soon as you urbanize an area, you see an uptick in allergy/asthma/autoimmune disease. I'm sure you can understand that the human body reacts differently to different germs, right? They're definitely not all created immunologically equal. Germs like measles will make you child (and mine) sick. Germs like Lactobacillus casei will prevent autoimmunity. Of course there are many other factors like vitamin D and genetic predisposition. These are all factored in.

Before I run to my little lecture, I wanted to make sure we all knew about this one... Green Tea Boosts Antibiotics for Superbugs Egyptian study finds drink increased effectiveness threefold Posted 3/31/08 MONDAY, March 31 (HealthDay News) -- Green tea can help antibiotics be three times more effective in fighting drug-resistant bacteria, even superbugs, according to a study by researchers at Alexandria University in Egypt. Green tea is common in Egypt, and it's likely that many people there drink it while taking antibiotics.Therefore, the researchers wanted to determine if green tea would decrease or increase the effectiveness of antibiotics or have no effect. "We tested green tea in combination with antibiotics against 28 disease-causing microorganisms belonging to two different classes," Dr Mervat Kaseem, of the university's pharmacy faculty, said in a prepared statement. "In every single case, green tea enhanced the bacteria-killing activity of the antibiotics. For example, the killing effect of chloramphenicol was 99.99 percent better when taken with green tea than when taken on its own in some circumstances." More at http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/healthday/080331/green-tea-boosts-antibiotics-for-superbugs.htm

Neat, thanks! I find it utterly fascinating that bacteria a few inches behind your belly button can make you happy, sad, anxious, etc. Amazing. Truth really is stranger than fiction (maybe that's why politicians don't go near the stuff )