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

[narouz]

I know you were kidding. :) But this thread seems to contain many leaps of logic like this, so I'm drawing attention to the gap in logic anyway, in case anyone isn't seeing it.
Selective cultivation - may sometimes involve removing a lot of undesired plants to allow conditions for a smaller amount of desired plants. Not necessarily an increase in overall growth.

Well, okay.
But, on the other hand,
to cultivate a garden does not always or even mainly connote,
to my mind,
removing or diminishing or spraying with Round-Up, etc.
It could just as easily connote enhancing the growth of preferred plants.

I only bother to push the point
because it does round us back nicely
to a central talking point in the thread--
how Peat would seem to share your leanings in the general notion of cultivation.
You cultivate your garden by trimming back.
Peat "makes friends" with his microbiome by withholding their favorite food
(if Stuart is reliable there),
by gagging them with carrot,
and by whacking them with the occasional tetracycline.

With friends like that....

 

[narouz]

Most people who eat freely...

Hate to truncate your post, Amazon,
because many good thoughts there pboycialisforthekundalini...

...but I was just wondering...
folks in these parts run screaming from even the whisper of the words
"strict Peat diet" or "optimal Peat diet,"
but me: I ain't scared!
So steel yourself,
and let me ask you:
do you think those eating a strict Peat diet
"eat freely"...?

 

[tara]

Well, okay.
But, on the other hand,
to cultivate a garden does not always or even mainly connote,
to my mind,
removing or diminishing or spraying with Round-Up, etc.
It could just as easily connote enhancing the growth of preferred plants.

I only bother to push the point
because it does round us back nicely
to a central talking point in the thread--
how Peat would seem to share your leanings in the general notion of cultivation.
You cultivate your garden by trimming back.
Peat "makes friends" with his microbiome by withholding their favorite food
(if Stuart is reliable there),
by gagging them with carrot,
and by whacking them with the occasional tetracycline.

With friends like that....

I'd guess that most gardens do better with both feeding and selective destruction.
I think there are some really well-designed and maintained permaculture gardens that don't require so much active weeding etc, but they are probably the minority. Many places have some vulnerability to dominant invasive species.
To the extent that I garden, I tend to do both. E.g. I make friends with my apple and pear trees by attempting smother or pull out out a lot of cleavers and convulvulous, as well feeding them compost etc.

 

[Amazoniac]

Most people who eat freely...

Hate to truncate your post, Amazon,
because many good thoughts there pboycialisforthekundalini...

...but I was just wondering...
folks in these parts run screaming from even the whisper of the words
"strict Peat diet" or "optimal Peat diet,"
but me: I ain't scared!
So steel yourself,
and let me ask you:
do you think those eating a strict Peat diet
"eat freely"...?

Absolutely not! Including me.
But there seems to be a healthy and wise restriction and a problematic restriction, the kind that 180º Health and Your Eatopia deal with..
It looks like you posted only to fit a pboy corolary in the middle, haha. I've been tempted to do that if that was the case! It's a matter of priority, right?

 

[narouz]

Most people who eat freely...

Hate to truncate your post, Amazon,
because many good thoughts there pboycialisforthekundalini...

...but I was just wondering...
folks in these parts run screaming from even the whisper of the words
"strict Peat diet" or "optimal Peat diet,"
but me: I ain't scared!
So steel yourself,
and let me ask you:
do you think those eating a strict Peat diet
"eat freely"...?

Absolutely not! Including me.
But there seems to be a healthy and wise restriction and a problematic restriction, the kind that 180º Health and Your Eatopia deal with..
It looks like you posted only to fit a pboy corolary in the middle, haha. I've been tempted to do that if that was the case! It's a matter of priority, right?

No, the post was not just a vehicle for a pboy emanation
(as important as they may be), silly man!
I think there may be a good question/point in there.
Let me sketch in some stray data points suggestively:

-Peat, when it comes to eating "leaves" (as he sometimes calls certain plants)
will say "I'd rather let the cow process it" (then just drink the milk).

-In the NPR interview about the microbiome I posted way upthread,
one of the scientists,
when asked about how much they've been able to learn
about links between eating certain foods
and gut health,
replied by saying something like this:
"So far it wouldn't seem to be maybe the associations you might expect--
like eating a lot of meat being linked to bad gut health, for example.
If anything, it seems like good gut health may be associated with how many different plants you eat."
(That is a Very loose attempt at a quote from memory of a show a few weeks ago )

-I'm experimenting with phytic acid (IP6) supplementation to reduce iron.
I believe phytic acid typically occurs in the fiber of grains.
Studies show, for what they're worth, that there are no bad side effects.
But phytic acid is a definite no-no for Peat,
and his dietary recommendations avoid it.
Studies are very positive at this point on phytic acid's abilities
to reduce iron, especially in the colon,
and in so doing reduce the occurrence of colon cancer.

You seem to be a fan, to some extent, of "eating freely."
And you agree that, in eating a strict Peat diet,
one does not at all eat freely pboytantricperfectionslastingmorethan4hours.

What I'm getting at is wondering if
eating a very restricted range of foods,
perhaps restricting especially fibrous plant foods,
but, in general, simply restricting food variety
might possibly pose microbiomic problems unforseen by Peat....

 

[tara]

It wouldn't surprise me if eating a wide variety of plants correlates with getting a wider range of micronutrient needs met. I imagine this could affect many aspects of health, including microbiome.
For this reason, and also to give our body lots of data and choices to work with in selecting foods by appetite, I'm in general tending to favour at least sampling as wide a range of edible plants as possible, whether one is trying to eat much or little fibre. I can see a case for avoiding a specific food that causes one trouble, and maybe for some temporary more severe restrictions in order to identify those. But I think there are a lot of people around who are restricting too many foods, and getting malnourished as a consequence.

 

[Stuart]

There are hundreds of endocrinologists out there now who treat Hashimoto's Thyroiditis as an autoimmune condition caused by a leaky gut. The progression is, FIRST, people eat improperly, going high on refined foods and low on fiber, then SECOND, the gut loses it's tight junctures between endothelial cells, then THIRD, the body has chronic inflammation, one symptom of which is hypo-T. 80% of the hypothyroid situation these days is just a symptom of autoimmunity caused by improper diet which ruins the gut endothelium and the person's immune system. The solution is via diet.

Unfortunately, only the old-school endocrinologists still treat hypothyroid as a disease. The modern practitioners treat it as a symptom (if it's Hashimoto's) and they fix the patient's gut via the patient's diet and the symptoms subside.

One of hundreds of view on this

One View

There are so many more. If one is interested, one searches. Searching and questioning is so superior to accepting and coping.

I think you nailed it.

 

[Stuart]

SIBO seems an all too frequent manifestation of gut dysbiosis, but the notion of having a sterile S.I. has also always struck me as unhealthy - for similar reasons that having a sterile mouth or stomach would be. This article talks about the difference between having a healthy S.I. microbiota and having SIBO.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maura-hen ... 20448.html
an excerpt:

SIBO symptoms include:

• Gas
• Bloating
• Abdominal cramping
• Nausea
• Fatigue
• Weight gain
• Nutrient deficiencies (in particular, iron, B vitamins, and fat)
• Depression

The small intestine is full of bacteria, and that's a good thing: We need a robust population of bacteria in both the small and large intestine to stay healthy. But when there are too many of the wrong kind of bacteria in the inappropriate place, symptoms like the above arise. Bacteria migrate to the small intestine for a variety of reasons, including:

• Antacid use
• Low digestive function
• Decreased motility from nerve damage, chronic stress or any disease that causes constipation like hypothyroidism
• Chronic antibiotic use
• Celiac disease and non-celiac gluten sensitivity
• Inflammatory bowel disease like ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease

Denying that we need 'a robust population of bacteria' (even in the S.I.) seems to be missing the point of why breast milk ensures that we have such robust (and appropriately sized) bacterial popuations throughout our digestive tract from day one doesn't it?

 

[Amazoniac]

You seem to be a fan, to some extent, of "eating freely."
And you agree that, in eating a strict Peat diet,
one does not at all eat freely pboytantricperfectionslastingmorethan4hours.

But I'm not. I think that eating freely has its merits but must of us are too detached from ourselves to rely on instinct. It doesn't seem like a good strategy for long-term also, what works for now might have its costs in the future. And there's also the fact that if you're not in optimal health, your cravings might guide towards that but at the same time has its risks; there are many people here who were sick and if they insisted in following their cravings they would've created even more damage and problems.

And regarding pboy,
He was never a spermatozoid, he was a jacked eel.
You cannot stalk him, instead call it pursuing happiness.
Sweet dreams are made of him, who am I to disagree?

---

I wonder what is the underlying reason why some people supplement with RS and their discomfort with fermentation resolves in a matter of days, while for others those effects get worse and worse with time..

 

[narouz]

It wouldn't surprise me if eating a wide variety of plants correlates with getting a wider range of micronutrient needs met. I imagine this could affect many aspects of health, including microbiome.
For this reason, and also to give our body lots of data and choices to work with in selecting foods by appetite, I'm in general tending to favour at least sampling as wide a range of edible plants as possible, whether one is trying to eat much or little fibre. I can see a case for avoiding a specific food that causes one trouble, and maybe for some temporary more severe restrictions in order to identify those. But I think there are a lot of people around who are restricting too many foods, and getting malnourished as a consequence.

Well, for example, duing a rather impoverished period,
I was eating a Peat diet of mainly
orange juice, milk, gelatin, coffee, a little liver and oysters...

 

[Stuart]

You seem to be a fan, to some extent, of "eating freely."
And you agree that, in eating a strict Peat diet,
one does not at all eat freely pboytantricperfectionslastingmorethan4hours.

But I'm not. I think that eating freely has its merits but must of us are too detached from ourselves to rely on instinct. It doesn't seem like a good strategy for long-term also, what works for now might have its costs in the future. And there's also the fact that if you're not in optimal health, your cravings might guide towards that but at the same time has its risks; there are many people here who were sick and if they insisted in following their cravings they would've created even more damage and problems.

And regarding pboy,
He was never a spermatozoid, he was a jacked eel.
You cannot stalk him, instead call it pursuing happiness.
Sweet dreams are made of him, who am I to disagree?

---

I wonder what is the underlying reason why some people supplement with RS and their discomfort with fermentation resolves in a matter of days, while for others those effects get worse and worse with time..

Isn'r 'eating freely' completely different to eating a 'wide variety' of foods'? Trying to be guided by your instincts would only be an effective dietary practice if the food choices available to us matched those available while those instincts were developing. Modern food processing runs rings around our instincts. Most people who drink coffee enjoy the caffeine jolt and the taste, not because they think it's healthy . in fact someone who has accustomed their bodies to the stimulatory effect by consuming a great deal of it will go through 'withdrawal' if they stop feeding the habit - just like any addiction. People eat fried chicken ( or pufa deep fried anything) because it tastes good, and probably don't even know what pufa is.

The people who have trouble with fermentable fiber initially(especially RS) seem to be the ones with SIBO. Most Peatarians will have SIBO - there seem to be so many who complain that 'fiber doesn't "agree" with them" - probably the clearest indication that you have an overgrowth of either bacteria or yeasts/fungus (particularly if they've used antibiotics - which positively encourages yeast/fungus overgrowths) in your S.I.
I wonder why Dr. Peat talks a lot about using antibiotics to try to achieve a sterile S.I. when it is so widely understood they are like petrol on the fire of unwelcome yeast/fungal outbreaks?
In my experience fermentable fiber always works in correcting gut dysbiosis, but some people will have to start with a small enough dose, and increase that dose imperceptibly slowly. For example, one lady in Western Australia started with only .5 g of supplemental fermentable fiber and increased it by .25 g after the first 6 weeks. It's just a matter of starting with a small enough dose, and then increasing it slowly enough that your individual case of dysbiosis doesn't get left behind. But humans are an impatient lot after all.
Even the purist of the Peatarian pure is already consuming SOME fermentable fiber, so it's not as if Peatarians somehow have different physiology from other humans.
Nobody, including Dr.Peat, thinks that some people don't have a colon - which by its very nature is teeming with bacteria. some of which are absolute experts at keeping the ones who don't do good things (and sometimes very bad things!) in their cages.
We don't just want a colonic bacterial free for all, do we? We want to give the good guys the best chance of calling the shots and contributing to our health in their time honoured way.
Antibiotics never seem to help with gut dysbiosis long term. They can't really, because they have no effect on yeasts/fungii, Even manmade antifungals seem to be a pretty shabby effort compared to a healthy microbiome - commensal bacteria.

 

[Amazoniac]

Many infections worsen if you provide with the nutrient that the pathogens needs to flourish, it's a typical example of how even a whole-food diet can be problematic. You'll feel extremely well by doing that and on the long-term you'll lose control over the issue..

 

[EnoreeG]

It wouldn't surprise me if eating a wide variety of plants correlates with getting a wider range of micronutrient needs met. I imagine this could affect many aspects of health, including microbiome.
For this reason, and also to give our body lots of data and choices to work with in selecting foods by appetite, I'm in general tending to favour at least sampling as wide a range of edible plants as possible, whether one is trying to eat much or little fibre. I can see a case for avoiding a specific food that causes one trouble, and maybe for some temporary more severe restrictions in order to identify those. But I think there are a lot of people around who are restricting too many foods, and getting malnourished as a consequence.

tara, I couldn't agree more. Sampling. Or, as the deer and elk call it, "browsing". It's too bad grocery stores have to frown on browsing in the produce isles! Maybe if they had a "cup" we could drop a dollar in for the right to sample, we wouldn't have to feel like a thief? What fun that would be, and probably a great advantage to our health.

As you say, there are so many "little" things, like the micronutrients that our bodies actually need, but that only come in if we happen to select this or that different plant. But if we get some little bit every week or two, it still helps our health.

I happened on this article today when someone on another forum mentioned "OPCs" and I didn't know what that was: a name for certain antioxidants that are one type of bioflavanoid.

bioflavinoids, etc.

You get them from a lot of different foods, but when people run very short on these powerful antioxidants, (50 times more powerful than vitamin E!?) then they turn to supplements such as grape seed extract and pine bark, to increase their intake. (And immediately get over allergies and inflammation sometimes.)

Just an example though of how, if you eat a great variety, throughout the month, you may get enough of these and other micronutrients such that you are in way better health through the years.

 

[Stuart]

Many infections worsen if you provide with the nutrient that the pathogens needs to flourish, it's a typical example of how even a whole-food diet can be problematic. You'll feel extremely well by doing that and on the long-term you'll lose control over the issue..

Are you describing gut dysbiosis as an 'infection'?
One of the reasons I like the supplementary approach to ressurrecting a dysbiotic gut is because you have great control over the dose. Eating wholefoods certainly provides a host of other nutrients, but possibly far too much of the critical nutrient - fermentable fiber.
It's potent stuff, no doublt about it. We should treat it with the respect we also owe our microbiota.
And microbiomes are slow to change. It's just the nature of the beast I think.
Can I ask you, if you have SIBO and you studiously avoid the food that shows that so clearly-fermentable fiber- but the inflammation having the SIBO causes just simmers away under the surface, what is achieved long term?
'The reason I ask is that Peatarians often wave the spectre of endotoxins as being the only inflammatory process worth considering. But inflammation is damaging whether it's endotoxin related or not.
You don't want SIBO because it's inflammatory. Even the term itself doesn't really convey the full inflammatory picture, because the 'B' stands for bacteria. What about the yeast/fungal overgrowths , which are surely just as inflammatory as the bacterial ones ?

 

[Amazoniac]

I'm calling infection every undesirable consequence due to microbes.
And if they are a slow change, you don't need supplementary fiber, because that would be a therapeutic approach, and that usually causes more problems than solves.
SIBO is another example of how tricky eating by intuition can be. The common sense would be to simply remove all the fermentable carbs but in the long-term that will be problematic because the root of the problem has little to do with excess or lack of fiber.
Endotoxins in small amounts work as signalling compounds to the immune system. When the metabolism is impaired and gut integrity is compromised, the ability to avoid and eliminate them will also be impaired, so the influx is greater than what you can handle, so an inflammatory state sets in to prevent their free circulation and damage to important parts.

 

[Amazoniac]

Forgot to add that those who suffer from skin problems, it probably has to do with the intestines. To prevent that type of inflammation that we are discussing, you need gut integrity. But one of the factors is the coordination of the epithelial tissue, the balance between regeneration of epithelial cells at the crypt of villi and their shedding at the tip. This coordination involves some steps and requires proper metabolism and nourishment for optimal function. If you have a constant inflammation over there (and that includes dietary factors), there's no room for repair. This is why in diets like GAPS they have an introduction phase, that you remove all possible rough foods and introduce them slowly only after the mucosal layer has been properly restored.

 

[tara]

Well, for example, duing a rather impoverished period,
I was eating a Peat diet of mainly
orange juice, milk, gelatin, coffee, a little liver and oysters...

In my more impoverished periods I could only have dreamed of oysters. :)

I imagine it's OK for some people to eat more restrictively for limited periods, and some people really have to while getting digestion going again, or for economic reasons. But I have my doubts about it as a deliberate long term health strategy. It would be hard to know which trace minerals one is getting enough of, given our impoverished soils etc. I would expect variety to help with that. My impression is that Peat mostly eats a few things regularly, but will also eat other things for variety sometimes - say a juicy young turnip, for instance. :)

 

[narouz]

Well, for example, duing a rather impoverished period,
I was eating a Peat diet of mainly
orange juice, milk, gelatin, coffee, a little liver and oysters...

In my more impoverished periods I could only have dreamed of oysters. :)

I imagine it's OK for some people to eat more restrictively for limited periods, and some people really have to while getting digestion going again, or for economic reasons. But I have my doubts about it as a deliberate long term health strategy. It would be hard to know which trace minerals one is getting enough of, given our impoverished soils etc. I would expect variety to help with that. My impression is that Peat mostly eats a few things regularly, but will also eat other things for variety sometimes - say a juicy young turnip, for instance. :)

Actually, aside from the restrictions imposed by impoverishment,
I could, and have, said
that such a diet as I sketched above
is a pretty good optimal Peat diet
(with some tweaking and fleshing out).
Synthesizing what Peat writes and says in terms of general recommendations,
and by what he says about his own diet,
in my view,
Peat says little about variety as a goal in diet.

When asked about his own diet,
he is able to make a long list of tropical fruits
that he apparently can get down in Mexico.
So...some variety there.
But in term of his general recommendations...
variety does seem to come up much.

I can't remember where I've heard or read this exactly,
but from the remarks he's made over the years about his own diet,
I get the pretty clear picture
that for long periods his main foods
are milk and orange juice.

 

[tara]

@narouz
You may be right.

But eating several different fruits would relevantly count as variety in my books. He also talks about eating various animal products - beef, (lamb?), fish, shellfish, milk, eggs. And occasional turnips, and broth from green veges. He's talked about trying and enjoying various foods, and stopping or reducing some of them to just a little hen he noticed they affected him badly (eg keffir, beer). That speaks to me of enjoying foods for the taste, and being open to trying various things, as long as they are not known to be particularly harmful.

Milk and OJ as <i>main</i> foods doesn't preclude regularly including a little of various other foods too.
When it comes to trace minerals, some of them you need very little of, and it may be fine if you go a month or more without them as long as you do get them sometimes. Eating a variety for several months, and then more restricted when that is not available, that may work fine.

Peat talks about milk and OJ/fruit as a basis for a diet, not necessarily as the whole diet.

 

[narouz]

You seem to be a fan, to some extent, of "eating freely."
And you agree that, in eating a strict Peat diet,
one does not at all eat freely pboytantricperfectionslastingmorethan4hours.

But I'm not.

I see. I misunderstood you.

And regarding pboy,
He was never a spermatozoid, he was a jacked eel.

I think this may deserve a thread of its own.