Why Is There So Much Soluble Fibre In Human Breast Milk?

[Amazoniac]

Stuart, please measure your words in your response. The entity that just posted has the title of a lord in here. It's impossible to question him because if you look for the meaning of the word truth in a dictionary, you'd find: pboy.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion - even pboy

Jokes aside, please discuss ideas, don't attack people for having one and raising questions.

Even pboy or mainly pboy?

 

[jyb]

You need to feed your cells, that's it. bacteria interfere with that. Its actually like a comedy skit or something reading some of this stuff to me

Feeding your cells is precisely why some studies focus on some gram-positive bacteria for anti-inflammation, repair of gut lining and prevention of overgrowth in the upper intestine by endotoxin bacteria. There are not many alternatives treatment out there, other than stool transplant, antibiotics and diet. Whether you need to eat any vegetable fibre or much fibre is another question.

 

[Stuart]

@ pboy
Aren't you an interesting person.
And I'd start slow if I was you. 50g soluble fiber after years of far less (although if you eat fruit you'll already be getting quite a bit of pectin) won't end well.
Look I'm sorry if you're feeling defensive. I'm actually thrilled that your dietary choices are working for you.
A couple of points though. Oligosaccarhides can't signal anything. They're a kind of sugar that only gut bacteria can metabolize. There are many types of oligosaccarhides. HMO's are the ones found in human milk. And it is well known that formula fed babies are much more prone to health problems in later life. Not just because the oligosaccarhide they use as a kind of ersatz HMO called GOS. The soy protein is probably the biggie. Dr. Peat would know about this. It contains potent phytoestrogens.
The gut bacteria that eat the oligosaccarhides on the other hand, have potent signaling mechanisms. Particularly, and probably most spectacularly, directly to the brain. The gut/brain axis has been known about for 20 years. But the intricate complexities of it probably won't be understood in your or my lifetime.
cheers,
Stuart

 

[InChristAlone]

Yes I do much better w/o grains as far as irritable bowel, but it can happen from fruit fiber as well. I just think all fiber is bad news for me. Maybe besides potatoes once my bacteria get used to it. I get plenty of soil based organisms, I like to garden and compost, and I have eaten directly out of the garden w/o washing and all that and typically don't use a lot of soap. I really think gut dysbiosis is more because of poor digestion/poor metabolism than not feeding the proper ones. I'd rather not feed them.

 

[pboy]

I agree its probably so complex science wont be able to fully lay it out...direct experience is all I can go on, and its like...the more fermentable fiber the more gas, bloating, and mental malaise I have. Which if say I have to live a super active focused day, it can make depressed or angry because the energy feels like its being suctioned down into the gut instead of in my nerves.

At first I was worried a while back..not worried, just that like...without fiber, am I still gon ***t on time? where there be stool at all? stuff like that...and to my pleasant surprise, nothing changed...in fact it got better. What ive deduced is that fiber, especially the insoluble type, actually wastes (scrapes) colon mucus and leads to constipation, im pretty certain of that. The initial movement will seem full and huge, but then the next one or two is very delayed and you're left feeling irritated. Soluble fiber doesn't seem to do much other than combine everything into one piece, but with also a lot of gas. The gas is the worst part, just because of the stretching it causes, and serotonin therein. I heard Peat talk about expiriments doen where they'd inflate a balloon in people (or rats? lol) colon and it would casue a whole cascade of stress signals...this was after i already came to that conclusion myself and it made total sense. Another thing ive noticed is that...anytime gas or something motions..like a peristalsis in the colon, it causes a temporary like short circuit or shut up, like a blip, in the mind...so if in a conversation or just train of thought it can be like weird...I think that's a huge factor with serotonin and social anxiety is that the mind isn't stable because of pressure and shifting in the gut which rubs nerves the wrong way. All the other stuff about beneficial bacteria, all that and what not, just seems like a theory with no relevant basis.

I wish you well and didn't mean to be rude, but like someone like Janelle above, might get confused and herself going against intuition following a theory, im sure theres a lot of people like that that read here or other places.

Ive written in other topics too, but fatty acid soaps are probably the most effective way to not only promote bowel movement (if you need it) but to add bulk that causes no gas or irritation, and its probably actually antimicrobial also. All whole milks would naturally produce some of these, its when fat is eaten with a relatively high amount of calcium and magnesium. If milk bulks your stool its most likely that, not bacterial mass. You can experiment, whole milk then skim just to see the difference, its quite profound and noticeable...and the fatty acid soaps actually protect from fermentation of sloughed protein or indigested protein to an extent

I really think too, its not even fruit fiber, pectin even, that is a major gas cause or irritation cause. Id eat multiple cups of applesauce and get just a minor amount of gas, or figs, or something like that, but if I ate dates, or something like...certain starches, its a profound difference. Its also the patterning of it. The fruits mostly just...its rhythmic, like you eat something, then some peristalsis, or drink something, its not random and variable, like it is with starches and the indigestible sugars in dates as an example. That's the kind that's like a major irritant and non rhythmic in how it moves

Its much easier to see things as they are when there isn't a theory blocking your vision, you simply observe what is happening over time and pay attention to things....and in that sense too, you can act accordingly....whatever it turns out is going on on the microscopic level doesn't matter as much, or at all, because you're in control of the tangible happening anyways

 

[Stuart]

Fair enough Janelle525.
Final point though. The reason I even raised this topic is the interesting fact that breast fed babies get 25 g of soluble fiber every day. Evolution clearly settled on such a high amount for a reason. Now perhaps you think post weaning, we just don't need it any more. That seems odd to me. The bacterias' descendants have exactly the same food preferences. They still crave soluble fiber till our dying day, even if we decide not to give it to them. There's an awful lot of them , and they're very well understood to be intricately involved in whole body human health. If you aren't getting the best food, how does that make you feel? So spare a thought for the hundred trillion gut bacteria you carry around your entire life.
Perhaps the difficult thing for us all to accept is that gut bacteria have completely different food preferences than the simple macronutrients our upper digestive tract requires to provide energy for our bodies. And don't forget also that a well fed colon is a powerhouse of micronutrient absorption, minerals particularly, and if it's really powering, even manufactures many vitamins, particularly Vit K2. That is very well understood I'm afraid, and has been for about 50 years.
Now pboy even admitted that he thinks what happens before the colon is more important than what's going on in it. Perhaps you even agree with him. But then the colon -such a huge bag of bacteria after all - would be an awful waste of space don't you think?
Enjoy that garden,
Stuart.

 

[Dutchie]

@Dutchie
Enjoy those cooled fries! You know you don't reduce the retrograded RS that has formed while cooling if you then heat them up again. You can even increase the RS by further cooling/heating cycles , although the increases in each successive cycle are diminishing.


Stuart

Thanx for the tip Stuart.:) I read that too about the reheating,truth of the matter is that I actually like the cooled down fries,they somehow feel denser I guess....
I need to Google a list of higher soluble fiber foods and see if there are some of them on there which I can incorporate some more. I know a lot of fruits contain soluble fiber,but fruit isn't much of an option for me. (I know some people here like to blame fiber in fruits for theor digestive problems,but personally I found that for me it's not the fiber,it's the fructose. But I guess on a forum like this,saying fructose is the root of a lot of my problems and that it doesn't necessarily have to be 'beneficial' bc Ray says so...is like swearing in the church.:/ )
I actually need to get myself together and start my own experiment,bc I can't keep doing what's happening with the fries situation. Apart from that the oil probably isn't the most optimal,though it's probably the better choice of oil compared to the other regular frying oils they use at cafetaria's and fastfood places and such.
(I actually contacted the manufacturing company of that particular oil bc I had my suspicions about it.)

 

[Amazoniac]

In some studies where they were testing the effects of various proportions of amylose to amylopectin, two constituents of starches, they actually had to dissolve the starch solution high in amylose due to its viscosity. It became unpalatable to the volunteers after cooling and forming the retrogated starch. Haha! So yeah, cooling makes them much more denser.
In poverty they prepare starches undercooked to take advantage of the fermentation.
Lactic acid by the way is relatively caloric, is one of the potential problems with fermented foods.

 

[mt_dreams]

SBOs are great in theory, but there are many cases of people taking sbo supplements and then having their health spiral downward. I believe sbo's activate Th1, so for people who already have an overacting Th1, this could be problematic. That being said, getting your hands & feet dirty (with dirt) now & then would seem to be beneficial towards harmony with mother earth.

Stuart do you have any studies or reports about babies taking in that much fiber. Off the top of my head, it seems like they wouldn't be getting more than 4-5g of the stuff assuming babies drink under 1 liter per day.

 

[Dutchie]

Yes I do much better w/o grains as far as irritable bowel, but it can happen from fruit fiber as well. I just think all fiber is bad news for me. Maybe besides potatoes once my bacteria get used to it. I get plenty of soil based organisms, I like to garden and compost, and I have eaten directly out of the garden w/o washing and all that and typically don't use a lot of soap. I really think gut dysbiosis is more because of poor digestion/poor metabolism than not feeding the proper ones. I'd rather not feed them.

Do you have no/minimal problems with potatos? If so,it migth not be the fiber since you mention fruit having the same effect as grains on your IBS. I had problems with IBS too and found that it was the fructose/fructans&lactose in foods that mainly cause these problems.
I'm doing a bit better now that I cut out all lactose containing foods and fruit in general and try to mindful of avoiding higher free fructose foods (even at the smalles amount,except for blueberries.I still eat them but restrict the amount I eat) ,my bowels are a bit better and my belly a little less 'pregnant'looking.

 

[InChristAlone]

Lactose is definitely not a problem, I can drink just milk with sugar and just be constipated. I hate to blame any one food though because like Peat said I think it is bigger than that. Fructose might be something for me to look into as well.

 

[Jennifer]

And it's hard to avoid the fact that all fruit contains pectin. Oranges and melons are packed with it. And many vegetables ( the stars would have to be the alliums -garlic, leeks, onions) are bursting with inulin, which is probably the most fermentable carbohydrate there is. Gut bacteria have daydreams about inulin. Curiously long chain inulin is actually called 'polyfructose' in China (but not in the West). Dr. Peat would approve don't you think?

So I'm just really wondering if he really does advise not to eat soluble fiber, or whether some people think that's what he advises. The constant reference to the unscientific term 'soluble fiber' rather than the current 'fermentable fiber' usage I have noticed in the Peatarian commentariat lends credence to that belief being mistaken ( or perhaps just outdated - not reflecting Dr Peat's current understanding).

Stuart, below is part of an email exchange I had with Ray this past February where he mentions his up-to-date view on fiber. I gave him my blood labs which showed low cholesterol and I told him about the intestinal inflammation from a bacterial overgrowth I'm currently dealing with.

Ray wrote: "Low cholesterol can be caused by intestinal inflammation, and starches are a common cause. Sweet potatoes are effective promoters of bacterial growth, rice and potatoes can cause gas especially if they aren't well cooked."

I wrote: "Do you think eating a diet that consists of milk, cheese, meat/shellfish, eggs, juice and small amounts of butter or coconut oil would be a nutritionally complete and healthy diet to do? After doing the fruitarian diet, I don't seem to tolerate fiber at all. It gives me a lot of painful trapped gas in my colon area. I could try the flowers of sulphur again and see if it helps, but for the time being I'm hoping to avoid fiber if I can."

Ray wrote: "I think fiber is always a risk (I avoid them all except for occasional well cooked mushrooms and bamboo shoots, which are germicidal). The foods you list contain all the essential nutrients."

 

[tara]

@stuart,
Why would gut bacteria be more likely to attack the gut lining when they are less fed/fewer?
Intuitively (and I am not well informed in this area), I would have expected the population to increase according to how much food is available, not to limit itself to the food we eat just because there is more of it, if they are also able to eat us?

(I think maybe fungi, eg candida, are different in this regard, because they can take different forms depending on their environment.)

 

[Stuart]

@ tara
Your colon is basically a bag of bacteria. About 100 trillion of them. They all have to eat something, and what's left for them after the upper digestive tract has extracted all the macronutrient calories is soluble fiber. Insoluble fibre (cellulose, for example) cannot supply them with nourishment, and just produces more bulk in your stool. The wall of your colon also produces mucus/mucins, and gut bacteria will also eat this if they have to. but if they do, they don't thrive, and what is even worse over time this mucus lining becomes progressively thinner and will lead to intestinal permeability. This is inevitable I'm afraid. We all have a colon, and even if you don't consume enough soluble fiber, the trillions of bacteria will eat you.
One of the things I didn't mention is that one of the major reasons keeping your gut bacteria well fed is that they will reward you with copious amounts of SFCA's (short chain fatty acids) the most important being butyrate. SFCA's are all considerably more saturated than even coconut all, Red Palm fruit oil, or butterfat. In short they are the healthiest fats in existence. There is no dietary source of SFCA's. The only way to get them is for your gut bacteria to make them. They provide a host of health benefits, control bacterial overgrowths in the small intestine, and are used as an energy substrate by your body just like any dietary fat - except you don't eat them, you eat soluble fiber, and your gut bacteria do it for you, then the wall of your colon will absorb them, helped by other beneficial gut bacteria.
I think one commenter said ; '..but they're still bacteria'. I got the impression that being a bacteria was somehow 'bad'. Nothing could be further from the truth. Bacteria aren't intrinsically bad. Some are beneficial, and some are pathogenic, and ofter the 'good' guys eat the 'bad'. This goes on in your gut constantly. If it isn't well supplied with soluble fiber, pathogenic bacteria will always be more likely to survive. In which case people often reach for the antibiotics. Which might indeed help solve the short term problem of pathogenic bacterial overgrowth. But long term, it inevitably makes the much more serious problem of gut dysbiosis even worse. Man made antibiotics are indiscriminate bacterial destroyers unfortunately.
Your body is exquisitely perfected by billions of years of evolution to WORK. We are increasingly understanding that modern attempts to interfere with that intricate balance , for instance by limiting your intake of soluble fiber in a mistaken attempt to somehow take your gut bacteria out of the equation, always ends badly.
Don't forget when you try to shore up your dietary preconceptions, from whatever dietary guru you are currently subscribing to, that you have a very large bag of bacteria from birth who all need to be constantly fed. It has been very well understood for decades that the preferred food of gut bacteria is soluble fiber. And until very recently fruit was far less sweet so you had to eat a lot more of it to get the same amount of fructose. So we automatically consumed a lot more soluble fiber , particularly pectin. Remember the baobab fruit I mentioned in one of my earlier posts. It's 50% pectin. Humans have always eaten a similar proportion of soluble fiber as babies get in breastmilk. Until modern times. Far less infectious disease, no doubt. Unfortunately the long term health consequences of changing our diet from the way our bodies (and in this discussion, specifically our colons) are designed to work, and quaffing antibiotics to 'get well' has made us all sicker. And when you think about it, it's probably no surprise that diverging from the dietary intake of soluble fiber we consumed throughout our evolution produces the health consequences it does.

@whichever commenter wanted to know about the amount of HMO's in breast milk, this is one study:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3406618/
scroll down to the ''concentration composition and variation' paragraph if you don't find the other stuff interesting. I actually learnt heaps just from the abstract. Soluble fiber and the importance of gut health is amazing.
But there are hundreds. Just google ' HMO's in breast milk' if you are still curious. It's a very well understood field.
Stuart

 

[Stuart]

@tara
Forgot to mention, the number of bacteria in your gut does indeed fluctuate to a limited amount. But not very much, That's why nourishing it properly is so important, Don't forget we are mostly bacteria. All the other stuff is only a tenth of the number of bacteria in your gut. The health of your gut affects the health of every other part of your body.
Don't neglect it, because you are worried about serotonin for instance. The issue is serotonin dominance, not serotonin itself. If your gut bacteria are well fed, sure you'll have plenty of serotonin, as all breast fed babies do. But it will be in balance with dopamine.
Ask a happy healthy breast fed baby whether serotonin is intrinsically bad. I have no doubt that there are many other minor hormone interactions mediated by a well fed microbiome. We are only in the infancy of understanding the complexities of gut mediated endocrinology.
But the thing I particularly like about the high amounts of soluble fiber in breast milk is that it's incontrovertible , and surely shakes us out of our adherence to our preconceptions. People bandy 'studies' about to back their beliefs up on internet forums, but when you are dealing with physiological facts, it clarifies things a bit, don't you think?
I mean it's not as if the human colon shrinks after weaning does it?
And if soluble fibre wasn't so important to gut bacterial health, why has breast milk got so much in it?
Stuart.

 

[XPlus]

I used to have similar trains of thought before I’ve come to Peat. Earlier, I’ve dedicated significant amounts of time to studying the gut microbiome and the health connection; until the “flawed”, “simplistic” and “illogical” ideas of Peat started to work better for me than the $50 bottle of Prescripts Assist backed with years of clinical research (along with many other SBO and non-SBO based probiotics and prebiotics, food fermentation and anti-fungal experiments).

The gut microbiome research is great in theory but in reality it’s a lot of beating around the bush - just like communism. It thinks of gut bacteria as an organism that is independent on its own and at the same time as one that’s having an essential role interacting with physiology.

Bacteria are of expansive colonial nature. It isn’t realistic to expect the bacteria to be fed and stay put happily ever after. In theory, this would be similar to making the assumption that a lawn mower will stop when it’s fed enough grass. It’s a mechanical device that is traditionally designed to just keep going. It’s up to a person to control where it goes and when it stops.

Similarly, it’s up to our bodies to control bacterial activity in the gut. In terms of health priorities, a symbiotic relationship between us and the bacteria should only be considered within the context of physiological function. Our properly functioning system is the man in charge of controlling bacterial activity and therefore, it’s the main variable to work with when it comes to controlling bacterial activity, rather than manipulating the bacteria themselves. To my understating, this is how Peat sees it.

I don’t think bacteria evolved to respect when and where to stop expanding. They’ll just do it anywhere inside the gut or the body when environment allows just like they do it on a piece of bread or a dead carcass.

Temperature, humidity, acidity, aerobicity, food are the main factors in colonial expansion. Inside the body, these factors along with immunity are set by the functioning physiology. Just like a loan mower needs a person to control it, gut bacteria needs a functional physiology to control its imbalances and overgrowth.

And if soluble fibre wasn't so important to gut bacterial health, why has breast milk got so much in it?

A better question perhaps would challenge the importance of milk in itself. In any case, the answer remains the same.

Rather than studying the complexity of bacterial interactivity within the human system, studies should be directed towards the essentially of that activity, in the first place. That’s relevant, smart and more efficient science that is likely to find answers..

 

[YuraCZ]

Good read Stuart and I agree with everything. It make sense..

 

[YuraCZ]

12:51 gut bacteria

 

[Amazoniac]

If you pay attention to our GI tract, it's pretty clear thar fermentation should be modest because every gas generated goes against its flow and structure, unlike ruminants that have an ascending gut. And if we isolate all other concerns, the gas by itself can be problematic.

 

[InChristAlone]

Stuart,
So you are basically saying we have the responsibility to feed our bacteria like a pet? I'm not buying it. The times I dealt with my bacteria either trying to build it by using Garden of Life soil based probiotics-which made me feel extremely toxic, or trying to get rid of them, I have the most benefits by basically ignoring them, not trying to kill them off, but not trying to keep them happy either. I feel they are more of a burden than they are beneficial.

I think breastmilk feeds the good ones because baby's immune systems are weak, if they get an infection it is harder for them to fight it off, breastmilk really is great at keeping away intestinal infections. Also great for curing pink eye!