The wide world of probiotics and the microbiome has caught the attention of millions in recent years. The promise of new understandings of disease and prevention is not only capturing the minds of scientists, but also the common person. Even though we have been living with live foods for millennia (Yogurt, Kefir, Kombucha, etc), it is only recently that studies have been conducted showing the profound health benefits these foods and their beneficial bacteria can have on the human body. To be able to start a discussion on probiotics and the microbiome, we need to first take a step back to the first year of naturopathic medical school and understand some terms.
Probiotics are a living collection of beneficial bacteria available from a naturopathic physician, health food store, or online. You can use these probiotics to strengthen your digestive system. Numerous studies show that bacteria found in probiotics can help the bacteria that already live in the digestive system. The hard part is figuring out which bacteria are already living in your digestive tract and which probiotics to take. But more on that later.
Bacteria in the Microbiome
The entire collection of bacteria found in your digestive tract is termed the microbiota. There are many of these communities in different locations of the body, but we will focus on the gastrointestinal system. In order to determine which bacteria are living in any given environment, we can perform two tests. One test consists of culturing – growing – these bacteria in a controlled environment. The other test is performing a DNA analysis on these bugs. The microbiome is the collective, complete DNA analysis of these bacteria.
These communities of bacteria help protect different areas of our body from unwanted contact with disease-associated bacteria. Think of them as buying up all the houses on the block, allowing no new homeowners from coming in. If a house becomes vacant an instant bidding war ensues, and death and destruction and result. This can lead to symptoms such as gas bloating, diarrhea, headaches, or even disease such as Ulcerative colitis/Crohn’s, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Malabsorption/leaky gut, Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) or Small Intestinal Fungal Overgrowth (SIFO)/yeast to name a few. Dr. Brody’s specialty is understanding this microbiome community and designing natural treatment to prevent and heal the digestive microbiota community.
To continue the analogy, with a destructive bidding war the local government might decide to completely demolish the block. This is essentially what an antibiotic does. Antibiotics essentially function as a nuclear bomb, killing both good and bad bacteria in the digestive tract. A heavy dose of antibiotics can cause digestive issues as a side effect of removing good bacteria from your system. This is not stating that antibiotics are all bad. Although they can be helpful, antibiotics should only be used when absolutely necessary to potential collateral damage.
Symptoms and Health Issues
The most common health issues that can stem from an unhealthy digestive microbiome are Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) like Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s disease, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), leaky gut aka malabsorption, SIBO, and symptoms such as gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, or weight management issues. All these conditions can be related to different types of bacteria including Akkermansia muciniphila, Methanobrevobacter Smithii, Collinsella aeroforms, and Feacalbacteriacea prunizkie to name a few. Most of the time these bacteria need a targeted natural agent to modulate their growth and thus antibiotics are not useful. Generally, antibiotics employ a broad scope of destruction that will cause too much death and destruction to the remaining microbiome.
There are other health issues like inflammation in the heart via microbiota, a correlation to autism through the microbiome, and anxiety related to the production of neurotransmitters which are made in the gut. The majority of the immune system is also found in the digestive tract, so any issues with the immune system could be connected to an issue with the digestive tract. As examples, the Lachnospiraceae Family of bacteria produces a chemical called trimethylamine-n-oxide (TMAO) which can cause inflammation in the cardiovascular system (Heart). It has been found in research that high levels of the genus of Sutterella have been found in children with Autism and overabundance of the bacteria Alistipes has been associated with depression, and last but not least the amount of Klebsiella and Proteus genus can increase risk of different autoimmune disease like rheumatoid arthritis.
There has been a plethora of research over the years about different probiotics and prebiotics (food for good bacteria) in regards to having a balanced microbiota, but most physicians never seem to focus on lectins.
What are Lectins?
Lectins are different chemicals that act like defenses that are found in a wide array of foods. The best example is the caterpillar sitting on the tree eating leaves. The tree doesn’t want to die, and it needs the leaves for photosynthesis, so it needs a way to protect itself. It thus has certain chemicals (in this example lectins) in the leaves that cause some digestive upset in the caterpillar’s body, encouraging the caterpillar to leave that tree and find another plant to eat. Some of the foods we eat as humans can cause the same reaction. Foods like tomatoes, kidney beans, or wheat-based foods can contain some unhappy bacteria and cause low-grade inflammation.
If antibiotics function as the government demolishing the city block, these specific detrimental lectins and food particles function as banks foreclosing houses and turning a blind eye to squatters – still destructive to the microbiome, but with a smaller radius of effect. They kill large quantities of beneficial bacteria and allow other unsavory bacteria to take over the newly vacated space. We can control the level of inflammation by controlling which lectins and thus which foods we consume, but how do we know which food to consume? And which ones are going to be right for our digestive bacteria? Surprisingly, the answer lies within blood types.
What is a Blood Type?
Most people think only of their blood type when they are on the surgical table or giving birth, but truth be told we should think of blood type far more often. A blood type is simply a sugar that sits on the outside of most of the cells in the body. There are over 200 different blood types out there. We first discovered the ABO blood type system by placing a lectin from lima beans on different samples of blood collected from the patient and discovered that a process called agglutination occurs with people who have the A or AB blood type. From there the study of blood type, glycobiology, was born.
Scientists have used this field of research to study cancer, disease, and the origins of humans. Remember, these are more than sugars that are located on your blood, but sugars located on your entire body. Your DNA determines this sugar. Other insights can be gained about other genetic factors that can affect the microbiome by understanding this information. One of the most important mutations involved with the digestive tract is one that takes place in about 80% of the population: the FUT2 gene located at rs601338 in the DNA. This gene determines if you secrete your blood type sugar into all your bodily secretions. The sugars that your body secretes via this gene are either N-acetylgalactosamine for Type A, galactose for Type B, fucose for Type O, or a combination of both N-acetylgalactosamine & galactose for Type AB.
Bacteria and the Blood Type Sugar
Bacteria like free meals, with sugar being one of their favorites. And it’s reasonable that a bacteria that likes to consume N-acetylgalactosamine will inhabit an environment with plenty of this sugar. This is one of the reasons why knowing your blood type and DNA is so important to your microbiome. With this information, one can start filling in pieces of the puzzle and determine which probiotics most suit your needs. In essence, every person has a unique microbiome and they should have a unique probiotic to maximize the effect. This should be determined not by what is at the local health food store but on other scientific markers.
This information was first put together by Dr. Peter D’Adamo, a mentor and friend to Dr. Brody, to improve personalized treatment protocols, not for the masses but for the individual, unique patient in front of him. Dr. D’Adamo created the Blood Type Diet, uncovered the idea of the body potentially secreting your blood type sugar, and understood the potential harm of consuming lectins decades ago. Dr. D’Adamo’s research is still being independently verified to this day.
How to Improve the Microbiome
When it comes to improving our microbiome, diet is one of the most important factors. Dr. Brody has a personalized approach that determines a diet plan based on the patient. This is not the standard FODMAP diet that every patient gets if they have SIBO or the standard Mediterranean diet that everyone gets if they have heart disease, but a personalized diet that incorporates the patient’s health history, lab tests, family history, DNA, microbiome analysis, nutrient depletions from medication, phenotype, and of course disease. Dr. Brody thus makes personalized, unique diets and recommends probiotics for his patients based on all the known information of that patient. That is why it is so important to have as much information as possible.
Many suffer from digestive issues for years before seeking help, often relying on guesswork or inadequate knowledge to find treatment. This is why it is very important to seek out experts in the field. Naturopathic Physicians are these experts, and there is no substitute in the healthcare field for them. Other professionals try to treat like naturopathic physicians, but four-plus years of naturopathic medical education cannot be substituted. ND’s are fully licensed physicians who learn natural treatment strategies, investigate current research, and learn and apply allopathic/orthodox medicine to personalized natural treatment plans for patients- not personalized patients for treatment plans.
Appointment
You can contact the office to learn more about naturopathic medicine or to book an appointment with Dr. Brody. Dr. Brody is in-network with multiple major insurance companies but also has affordable self-pay options.
For more information on Dr. Brody’s approach to treating gastrointestinal health, please click here. For information about Dr. Brody’s microbiome analysis, please click here.
