Anyone try to cure their Leaky Gut?

This crazy motherfucker is gonna make me go point-by-rambling-disjointed-point.

Overarching thesis: Altering your gut microbiome is a matter of changing diet to support growth of desired microorganisms, NOT eating the foods with relatively low concentrations of these microorganisms and then calling it a day.

From the top:

Most of these aren't even lactobacillus strains (which appears to be the only thing you know even a little bit about)

Try again. I'm an enteric disease microbiologist. I mentioned the Lactobacilli specifically because they are the most important bacterial genus in fermented food production, and your recommendation basically boils down to "eat more fermented foods." Sure, I could have copied and pasted a comparison of every strain that may be present in each food's wiki article, but it's immaterial. The act of adding in dietary probiotics (regardless of their makeup) without a larger change in diet is a poor solution. You are just throwing the organisms through an incredibly harsh acidic environment (the stomach) where the majority of their number will be wiped out into an already-colonized environment for which they are not incredibly well-suited, then assuming that they will outcompete the established microflora on the establishment's home turf.

Even out of the lactobacillus strains in kefir, such as lactobacillus plantarum (WHICH AREN'T IN YOUGURTS BUT ARE IN KEFIR)

Since we're fond of copying from wikipedia: "Lactobacillis plantarum is a widespread member of the genus Lactobacillus, commonly found in many fermented food products as well as anaerobic plant matter. It is also present in saliva (from which it was first isolated)."

In other words, there's nothing inherently special about kefir containing L. plantarum which as you say

are actually known to colonize the gut and can even compete with stuff like E. Coli.

As we move farther away from culture-based methods and towards molecular characterization, it is becoming more and more obvious that the easy-to-culture E. coli is not the intestinal powerhouse it was once thought to be. Outcompeting E. coli isn't a huge accomplishment.

Now I'd like to circle back around to the ubiquity of L. plantarum because it provides an easy segway into the next issue: B. subtillis: those little motherfuckers are practically everywhere as well. If you simply want to add some B. subtillis to your diet, just go grab a handful of dirt, or leave your dinner out for a few minutes before you eat, or hell drink a glass of water from the tap. Adding more of a specific bacteria to your diet without changing the dietary factors that better supported harmful bacteria is like throwing cultures onto a plate of bad media every day instead of just getting a plate that supports their growth. Sure, superficially it will look like your desired culture is present, but after you stop adding the culture in it will eventually die off without a permanent change.

At this point, we get to the fun part:

Try again ass-for-brains.

You read some half article on how yogurt doesn't stay in your gut (which is generally true), but you haven't read studies/meta studies on other cultures or probiotic strains, of which there are hundreds if not thousands.

Nope. My information was pulled directly from a presentation I recently attended by one of the heads of the NIH microbiome project, specifically addressing how their meta-analyses were painting a picture that a) our understanding of the determinant factors and clinical implications of an individual's specific microbiome is still in its infancy and b) the one thing we do know is that altering your diet is the most effective non-invasive (read: not shoving a pill full of another person's shit directly into your poop hole) method of altering a microbiome. (Even then, they determined that a fecal transplant must be coupled with an improvement in diet in order to establish the desired organisms long-term. They determined that the efficacy of fecal transplant suppositories is due to bypassing the stomach and going directly into the area of largest microbial density without being completely burned away by stomach acid.)

Now we come to:

You are a fucking idiot. KEFIR =/= yogurt retard. Kefir is a scobi. Not a starter.

It's not uncommon for kefir to be sold as "yogurt drink" and to be used interchangeably with yogurt or even called a type of yogurt. If you can overlook my minor linguistic error, then I won't point out that "scobi" is actually "SCOBY," which stands for Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast, and is BY DEFINITION the "starter" used to create foods that are simultaneously fermented by bacteria and yeast. Deal?

/r/Fitness Thread Parent