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

[Amazoniac]

I don't think that fiber selects that much. This issue is more related to who was here first, us or plants. We evolved eating plants, so it makes sense if we also evolved means to also extract most of them letting microbes do this job. And any problem in the SI is not related with starvation of microbes, except if you put a lot of effort to not nourish yourself enough and disrupt the glycoprotein layer. And pboy doesn't care about this thread, he lives above the atmosphere and other life forms, apart from him there, are more scarce.

Janelle,
I honestly have no idea what you're dealing with. I rather not comment on anything because you probably already read enough bs on the internet. If I find something relevant I'll let you know..

 

[EnoreeG]

Stuart, thanks for your insight on yeast/fungi on the "bad" team, and the commensal bacteria load being critical in also controlling them as well as the few pathogens we are challenged with.

Amazoniac, thanks also. It just happens that I was thinking about what might be the diet of great apes this morning, and never having researched it specifically, I took a look. It's interesting. As you say, we, as well as the apes in our somewhat parallel evolutions, have essentially been plant eaters [read: fiber eaters], and somewhat to the degree that apes do, we can derive a lot of energy from plant fiber that gets converted to fats by commensal microbes. Not having as long a colon as apes, we are limited in the amount of saturated fat our germs can generate, but it still can comprise a significant portion of our calorie provision, as well as the butyrate component of the fat helping to fortify our immune system.

Diet of the Great Apes

 

[Stuart]

Amazoniac, thanks also. It just happens that I was thinking about what might be the diet of great apes this morning, and never having researched it specifically, I took a look. It's interesting. As you say, we, as well as the apes in our somewhat parallel evolutions, have essentially been plant eaters [read: fiber eaters], and somewhat to the degree that apes do, we can derive a lot of energy from plant fiber that gets converted to fats by commensal microbes. Not having as long a colon as apes, we are limited in the amount of saturated fat our germs can generate, but it still can comprise a significant portion of our calorie provision, as well as the butyrate component of the fat helping to fortify our immune system.

Diet of the Great Apes

I find I eat so much less food because I eat a lot of fermentable fiber. I don't actually eat much saturated fat. But my colon sure produces a lot, and gives it back to me - with the immune system 'interest' you referred to. Before upping the fermentable fiber I was constantly hungry, but found it impossible to gain weight. Now I've gained a bit, but don't ever feel the need to obsess over food.

 

[InChristAlone]

I am finding it hard to gain weight on a Peaty diet, unless I pound the ice cream. A day back to a normal diet and I'm suffering again. I for sure cannot do just dairy and sugar unless I drank like half a gallon, I'm just so over the milk. I did read most of this thread but TLR how much fermentable fiber should we get?

 

[EnoreeG]

Interesting, Stuart. Yes, I hardly ever get a "craving" but when I do, I follow it. Lately it's been only nuts or cheese I crave. I may be low on protein or, well, that other "P" word. But I certainly never crave something sweet.

I think it is intriguing that possibly the reason that most diets fail is due to ignoring fiber.

For instance, 50 years ago the Atkins diet was given a lot of flack, and people mis-followed it severely, all based on fiber. He was low-carb, but fine with fiber. Green leafies were a good thing, but people ignored that part of the diet and tried to exist on meats and ingested fats, thinking that was the important part. They'd go nuts after a few weeks for lack of micronutrients. Blamed the "diet". They thought of vegetables as "carbs" because the only veggies they ever ate were potatoes, canned corn and peas! The calorie-rich veggies. So they cut out all veggies. Fiberous, calorie-poor veggies though are the secret. Nowdays, the Paleo cult is essentially making the same mistake.

LIkewise, people believing in a "high carb" diet and wanting to reduce fat intake shoot themselves in the foot by not including fibrous veggies and fruit. They also will be relatively low in the micronutrients that the body is going to crave if you give it just macronutrients, and so they will be "starving" -- missing all the vitamins, minerals and enzymes from the veggies, plus all the saturated fat created by their lower gut critters, and they will cave in and drop the diet as a failure.

Few people study what nutrients are needed to keep metabolism purring and the heart happy and the immune system in top shape. We happen on an article or a Peat interview here and there, and the emphasis will be on one or 2 minerals or amino acids. We focus a while, order some supplements, and forget all about it. This all distracts us from the big picture. There are dozens of things that are needed in relatively small amounts, but that are absolutely essential for health. The more research they do, the more different minor things they find that we get (and need) from our food.

We need to realize we'll get some of everything, and in a relatively nice balance, if we eat a varied diet of whole foods, not overeating anything! I love Sean Croxton's acronym: JERF -- Just Eat Real Food. Once we learn (even almost) everything there is to know, and consolidate it and see how complex it can be as we focus on all the details, then I think we can realize it's time to simplify.

 

[Amazoniac]

that other "P" word.

I know what you mean..

 

[Amazoniac]

I am finding it hard to gain weight on a Peaty diet, unless I pound the ice cream. A day back to a normal diet and I'm suffering again. I for sure cannot do just dairy and sugar unless I drank like half a gallon, I'm just so over the milk. I did read most of this thread but TLR how much fermentable fiber should we get?

Some in every meal, you'll know when exceed. If a great portion of your plate consists of plants, you're probably getting enough..

 

[Amazoniac]

http://btvc.webfactional.com/knowledge- ... il/inulin/

 

[EnoreeG]

http://btvc.webfactional.com/knowledge-base/detail/inulin/

Wow! A shot across the bow of USS Fiberonimous! Thanks. Glad I haven't had to do supplements to gain fiber. As I quipped immediately above, JERF is good guidance. Just Eat Real Food. In whole foods, you get a mix of complimentary fibers, but not too much of one such that a previously subdued species might explode it's population. This is good to know.

A personal note which I hesitated to contribute before when the talk was of Jerusalem Artichokes: I have a skin inflammation reaction to them: I look like full blown leper. I find no information on this anywhere. But it happens if I eat them. Don't know if it's inulin though.

 

[InChristAlone]

Yeah I won't be adding anymore supps especially not fiber, I will eat the whole foods instead.

 

[Stuart]

http://btvc.webfactional.com/knowledge-base/detail/inulin/

Thanks Amazoniac.
Interesting indeed:

Sucrose is arguably one of the most unhealthy food additives in human history. We should learn from our experiences with sucrose and apply them to Inulin/FOS. Instead of adding refined, super concentrated Inulin/FOS to your food, eat the foods that naturally contain Inulin/FOS.

Guess Dr. Peat won't be going on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet anytime soon. Icecream anyone?
I also noticed that SCD does encourage the use of two concentrated sweeteners.
Honey - no problem there.
and
Saccharin - in fairness, saccharin has been around for over a century, and despite a lot of trying, has never been proven to have any harmful effects whatsoever.
Bur I thought they were arguing for naturally occurring substances?
Also the notion of avoiding supplements of any kind seems a bit flawed when a Peatarian dietary approach includes a lot of supplements, both natural substances and manmade chemicals.

No dispute with the 'JERF' idea EnoreeG mentioned of course. But some foods contain a lot more of a substance than others. And although I'd love to have my very own Baobab tree in my backyard, they take 8 years to bear fruit.
Isn't honey a processed food extract anyway? Bees collect flower nectar, concentrate it and vomit up the goodies.
I love it, and use it and sugar a lot. But it's bee vomit.

Amazoniac, I have to ask you, are you a proponent of the Specific Carbohydrate Diet? Or just cherry picking?
And speaking of the cherry you picked, you might find this interesting before you pop it in your mouth.
http://alobar.livejournal.com/3516513.html

 

[InChristAlone]

I briefly did an SCD diet at one point, but it was before I knew the importance of carbs and didn't include enough fruits so I caved and binged on popcorn a lot. The whole premise is to starve out the overgrowth of the bad guys and use mono sugars that digest in the upper digestive tract and re establish the good guys with yogurt. Soil based is a no no. It has worked wonders for IBD chrons and autism apparently. Honey is a mono sugar.

 

[Amazoniac]

I think there's some value in SCD/GAPS for starting to recover. Usually people are too weak from infections and it's worth avoiding the insults for a while to allow healing. The problem is that we can ferment a lot more than what's excluded, even protein. So, they're not adressing the root cause and it's not a long-term strategy.

 

[tara]

Doesn't the GAPS proponenet (Natasha?) suggest a lot of honey for anyone getting low blood sugar issues? I recall a suggestion to mix honey and coconut oil, and carry a jar of it around with you during the day and eat a spooonful whenever you need it.

 

[Stuart]

I briefly did an SCD diet at one point, but it was before I knew the importance of carbs and didn't include enough fruits so I caved and binged on popcorn a lot. The whole premise is to starve out the overgrowth of the bad guys and use mono sugars that digest in the upper digestive tract and re establish the good guys with yogurt. Soil based is a no no. It has worked wonders for IBD chrons and autism apparently. Honey is a mono sugar.

I wonder why they don't use fructose. Isn't it a monosaccjaride? And aren't both mono and di- saccarhides digested in the small intestine ? Disaccharides have to be split into their constituent monosaccharides first enzymatically, but I thought both the splitting and the absorption happen in the S.I.

How long did you stick with it before the popcorn got the better of you?

 

[EnoreeG]

http://btvc.webfactional.com/knowledge-base/detail/inulin/

Thanks Amazoniac.

Amazoniac, I have to ask you, are you a proponent of the Specific Carbohydrate Diet? Or just cherry picking?
And speaking of the cherry you picked, you might find this interesting before you pop it in your mouth.
http://alobar.livejournal.com/3516513.html

Good points Sturart. The problem with the SCD, from whence Amazoniac pulled the link, is that the SCD group has a problem with bacteria in general. In fact, on surface, SCD seems to be quite aligned with Peat, but in a probable "wrong assumption" way. Therefore, they will tend to recommend against any fiber that "feeds" bacteria. So now, as I review their diet again, I see the bias, and why they just have to go against fiber in general, and take it on, specific fiber by specific fiber.

For example, in the same website's other pages I find:

The intestinal tract forms a rich ecosystem, comprised of over 400 bacterial species. Some are harmless, and others not. In the gut of a healthy person, these various communities of microbes compete with each other for scarce nutritional resources.

Partial truth. They omit the part that bacteria like specific foods, (have a niche) and many are waiting for a more "preferable" food to show up. They omit that commensals don't compete with pathogens, they outright dominate them and pathogens are lucky to have a few representatives of each species even left alive. They omit that bacteria live a short life. They eat a little, spawn, or split, and die. They don't have time to "battle" except to wipe out an enemy to the environment. They don't battle over food, they battle over the life of the host. So the converse is true re: battle -- If pathogens get an upper hand, they outright dominate commensals, and drive them down near extinction, so then the host can handily be attacked.

In the large intestine, each type inhibits an overabundance of the others, and this prevents the waste products and toxins of a particular type of microbe from overwhelming the body.

Almost no "truth" in this at all. As above, the commensals don't inhibit an overabundance of other commensals. They are too busy eating and procreating, like gazelles on a savanna vs springboks. There's no "vs"! Also, commensals don't have substantial "waste products and toxins" or we wouldn't call them commensals. Essentially SCD is anti-microbe. They speak of "balance" as though it's a spinning top, or a circus performer's juggling act. Actually, once you get commensals in charge and eat moderate, varied fiber from varied foods, there's no balance to worry about. It's the most wonderful thing, like a Spring day with plenty of flowers and a soft breeze. Not a worry in the world. Nobody, on such a day should say "Are there too many daffodils?, Are there too many pretty, puffy clouds?".

When the balance in the gut is disturbed, an overgrowth of intestinal flora can result. Microbes migrate to the small intestine and stomach, inhibiting digestion and competing for nutrients. The gut then becomes overloaded with the byproducts of their digestion.

True that things can get out of balance. But not like this. Microbes don't migrate to the SI due to the imbalance in the colon. They migrate either because of insufficient fiber that should be continually moving mass southward, or because of a sticky valve (ileocaecal) between the 2 domains. They claim this migration of microbe mass to the SI is what causes "overload" of byproducts. They've already confounded their whole thesis. See, the opening sentence of the whole section I'm quoting from said...

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet™ is predicated on the understanding that Ulcerative Colitis, Crohn's Disease, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and gluten therapy resistant Celiac are the consequence of an overgrowth and imbalance of intestinal microbial flora

These are serious diseases of the lower gut. But to bring about a change, their solution is now stated to reduce the overload caused by bacteria in the small intestine that are adding to the overload.

They go on...

When carbohydrates are not fully digested and absorbed, they remain in our gut, and become nutrition for the microbes we host. The microbes themselves must digest these unused carbohydrates, and they do this through the process of fermentation. The waste products of fermentation are gases, such as methane, carbon dioxide & hydrogen, and both lactic & acetic acids, as well as toxins. All serve to irritate and damage the gut.

It's all a "nasty germ" tirade. All the fermentation products, as I'm sure Stuart and others see, are depicted as problem materials. No mention of resultant vitamins (B's and K), fats, immune enhancing factors, let alone "talk" going on between the microbes and the enteric nervous system.

Quite a distorted picture. I could grind at this longer, but for my purposes, yes, they have an agenda which is to poo poo anything that feeds bacteria. They might actually help people with lower-gut issues for a while because anything will help a serious dysbiosis there, but they are working with people who are near death from gut insults, and need a very careful treatment. Eventually though, to get to true gut health, the fiber needs to be restored in order to get the "balance" they speak of. It won't be done by ridding the gut of a healthy quantity of commensal bacteria.

Janelle -- Yes, you needed the fiber! Popcorn gave you some! I don't have a problem with simple sugars EXCEPT if you are going to exclude the fiber that keeps things moving and pushing against the slow migration of bacteria into the SI from below. Even if one doesn't have lower GI disturbances like Crohn's, if they eat only simple sugars and no fiber, they are going to get that migration that the SCD talks about. NOT because of the "competition" that SCD talks about, but because if things don't move in a timely manner, bacteria can migrate upwards, and when they find sugar in the SI, yes they compete, but not so much with each other as with the host. Now they are stealing your food. And yes, you may not gain weight because your sugars are going to keep your SI germs alive. Not as nasty as IBD or Crohn's, and a lot easier to fix, but still a bothersome dysbiosis.

The page I was quoting from is

Science behind the diet

 

[EnoreeG]

I think there's some value in SCD/GAPS for starting to recover. Usually people are too weak from infections and it's worth avoiding the insults for a while to allow healing. The problem is that we can ferment a lot more than what's excluded, even protein. So, they're not adressing the root cause and it's not a long-term strategy.

and done with style, grace, and brevity.

 

[InChristAlone]

Yeah, I didn't like many vegetables so I was probably lacking in a lot of things doing GAPS. I did it strictly for a couple weeks, then started binging on coconut flour muffins then the popcorn, ugh it took me a while to like popcorn again because I seriously ate a huge bowl with 2 Tbs of butter a day.

I know a lady who had to quit the simple sugars and start eating more fiber she said beans are great for her, she felt like she was dieing pushing the simple sugars. Much like what happened to me over the winter, constant anxiety attacks, the only thing that would help in the moment is to take more sugar.

 

[Stuart]

@ EnoreeG
Amazingly detailed comment once again! Thanks.
I actually had no idea how anti bacteria SCD is. The idea that 'overgrowth' of bacteria in the colon is what causes SIBO - rampant bacteria s q u e e z i n g back ( through sheer pressure force of 'overgrowth' ) through the ileocecal valve to cause havoc in the S.I., where they have no business, strikes me as simplistic nonsense. That article by the gastroenterologist I linked to went into some of the complexities of the mechanisms used to control bacterial numbers in the S.I. It seems to be a highly sophisticated toolkit of various measures to make the S.I. inhospitable to bacterial overgrowth (pH, antibacterial chemical measures etc. ) But I did get the impression from your comment that you think it is mostly just forward movement by a high fiber diet through the ileocecal valve that stops the bacteria in the colon 'straying' out of their territory. I do think there's a lot more to it than that. Mainly because they are so close: S.I. small bacterial populations then suddenly, WHAM, the colon - all bacteria.
A healthy gut must be able to make the S.I so inhospitable to bacterial ( and yeasts/ fungii as well of course) overgrowths. And having a dysbiotic gut means those natural control measures don't function properly.
It's so easy to blame the canary in the coal mine - fiber- for the problem rather than just being an impossible to ignore diagnostic tool.
The SCD diet seems to be consigning people to a life of avoiding certain foods without ever, as Amazoniac pointed out, fixing the underlying cause.
I can't help wondering if strict Peating does exactly the same.

 

[EnoreeG]

Yeah, I didn't like many vegetables so I was probably lacking in a lot of things doing GAPS. I did it strictly for a couple weeks, then started binging on coconut flour muffins then the popcorn, ugh it took me a while to like popcorn again because I seriously ate a huge bowl with 2 Tbs of butter a day.

I know a lady who had to quit the simple sugars and start eating more fiber she said beans are great for her, she felt like she was dieing pushing the simple sugars. Much like what happened to me over the winter, constant anxiety attacks, the only thing that would help in the moment is to take more sugar.

I can totally understand all this. At least you got some butter!

Here's the insidiously good thing about fiber, as long as it ISN'T a single-fiber supplement or something else manufactured:

When you eat fiber, you are getting MICRONUTRIENTS from the food containing the fiber.

Because it is a whole food. So you're getting a balance of many, many things! Certain, HIGHLY RESTRICTIVE DIETS are not going to do this. So then you need to supplement. But supplements aren't formulated, either as "multiples" or as "individual items" to actually compliment the foods you eat, and give you balance. The only way to get CLOSE to a healthy balance is to eat a variety of whole foods and see what makes you feel healthy. I have a feeling that people who radiate health do this routinely, but it's just my gut feeling because I do it and a few other healthy people I know do it also. No proof.

Sure, you can do this with a low-fiber diet to start with, if you are sensitive, but still, eat as great a variety as possible and eat whole foods.

So the converse way of looking at it is: If you eat a diet designed to minimize fiber, you TEND to be dieting to reduce micronutrients, or at best, you seriously distort which ones you have in ample amounts, and which you remain short of.