Category: umami hypothesis

Asthma and Probiotics

Seth Roberts15 Comments

In a long comment on an earlier post, JohnG tells how he failed and succeeded to get rid of disabling exercise-induced asthma. Lots of things didn’t work:

I tried Vitamin D; it didn’t work, but it did help my nasal allergies somewhat. I tried low carb dieting, and just like Dr. Lutz of “Life Without Bread” said, it made asthma worse while it practically cured my nasal allergies. I also tried the Dr. Sears approach of taking as much as 7.5g of EPA/DHA a day; no change at all in the exercise induced asthma.

The idea that asthma is due to lack of microbes made sense to him and he started trying fermented foods and probiotics. At first, nothing:

I re-reviewed the probiotic slant and found the Helminth story and all the trials that were going on in PubMed for them. With that logic in hand, I set about to find a probiotic that worked. I tried yogurt, kefir, fermented cabbage, and buttermilk to no avail. I then tried store bought probiotics one by one. I tried The Maker’s Diet probiotic and it didn’t help; but I do think it helped make a 20 year long wart go away. I also tried all forms of probiotics on the market; even LGG. Nothing.

Finally, success:

I bought this super high dose probiotic and took it along with a L. Sporogenes/bacillus coagulans. Voila, three days later I could really feel the difference during exercise. I continued that for 10 days. By the 10th day, I didn’t have to hit my inhaler at all during exercise. Wow!

First, I had to decide which probiotic did the trick. I didn’t want to spend a ton on that high dose probiotic, so I stuck with the Bacillus Coagulans and it continued working normally. So, I found my probiotic. Now, I needed to verify it wasn’t placebo. A close cousin to exercise induced asthma is the phenomenon of waking up sneezing and then promptly getting an asthma attack/or closure after that.

I went off my bacillus coagulans that I had been on for 14 days. By the second day, I noticed a little difference. By the third day, I had to hit my inhaler during the workout. By the 10th day (bacillus coagulans supposedly lives in your intestines 7 days), I was full-blown back to having to use 4 inhaler puffs and it wasn’t doing the trick. This was test phase one.

I then went back on the bacillus coagulans for 10 days. The same process repeated itself. The nightly asthma attacks abated after about 4 days and the same no-puff needed during exercise continued as well.

I then went back off the bacillus coagulans for 10 days. I got the asthma back at day 3.

I’ve now been back on 5 billion CFU’s of bacillus coagulans (duraflora) for 18 days. I don’t have to use my inhaler for exercise. I can feel the asthma come on very slightly and then go away.

Very impressive. Shows what can happen if (a) you think for yourself, (b) persist, and (c) have access to a lot of helpful information. I think he needed all three.

Vitamin K2 and Fermented Foods

Seth Roberts8 Comments

We evolved to like sour foods, foods with complex flavors, and umami foods, I believe, so that we would eat more bacteria-laden food. Why do we need to eat such food? Perhaps to get enough Vitamin K2. Vitamin K1 and Vitamin K2 are quite different. A brief introduction:

The term vitamin K refers to a group of compounds that have a 2-methyl-1,4-naphtoquinone ring in common but differ in the length and structure of their isoprenoid side chain at the 3-position. The 2 forms of vitamin K that occur naturally in foods are phylloquinone (vitamin K1) and the group of menaquinones (vitamin K2, MK-n), which vary in the number of prenyl units. Whereas phylloquinone is abundant in green leafy vegetables and some vegetable oils, menaquinones are synthesized by bacteria; therefore, they mainly occur in fermented products such as cheese.

A 2004 study found a huge protective effect of K2:

The scientists at Osaka City University gave 21 women with viral liver cirrhosis [which greatly increases your chances of liver cancer] a daily supplement of 45mg vitamin K2 (menaquinone) for a period of two years. A group of 19 women with the disease received a placebo for the same time. Liver cancer was detected in only two of the 21 women given vitamin K2 but nine of the 19 women in the control group, reports the team in today’s issue of JAMA (292:358-361). After adjustment for age, severity of disease and treatment, the researchers found the women receiving vitamin K supplementation were nearly 90 per cent less likely to develop liver cancer.

A huge effect, suggesting that K2 is necessary for a repair system to work properly. This recent article is more support for the idea that K2 protects against cancer. The effect is weaker, perhaps because there was less damage needing repair.

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Seth Roberts3 Comments

Thanks to Peter Couvares and Casey Manion.

Kombucha Eliminated Heartburn

Seth Roberts10 Comments

In a comment on an old post — in which I described how a friend’s acid reflux was greatly alleviated by kombucha — Dave Schulz says he had a similar experience:

My heartburn occurs daily unless a) I stick to a strict diet with no carbs, dairy, or greasy/fatty food, like the Paleo Diet or b) I drink kombucha daily. It’s not always possible to do a), so kombucha has literally been a life saver for me.

Daily kombucha eliminates his heartburn for long periods of time, not just for a few hours after drinking it. Due to the current ban he can no longer get it and his heartburn came back. He got the idea from a friend. Before kombucha, he’d tried many remedies that didn’t work. The three doctors he saw were no help.

On the Mayo Clinic website a doctor says that “until definitive studies quantify the risks and benefits of Kombucha tea, it’s prudent to avoid it.” This is what the Protestant Reformation was about: Speaking directly to God rather than waiting for “definitive studies” by experts that “quantify the risks and benefits”.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts8 Comments
  • “ant tribes” near Beijing
  • What exactly is umami?
  • Is omega-3 an antidepressant? “Initial analyses failed to clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of Omega-3 for all patients taking part in the study. Other analyses, however, revealed that Omega-3 improved depression symptoms in patients diagnosed with depression unaccompanied by an anxiety disorder.” Are they fooling themselves? Maybe not. My research suggests that morning faces can reduce only depression but also anxiety disorders. So if you have depression without an anxiety disorder it may indeed have a different cause.

Thanks to Anne Weiss.

Fermented Food in Japan

Seth Roberts11 Comments

If you know anything about heart disease epidemiology, you know that Japan has the lowest rate of heart disease in the world. The usual explanation is high fish consumption. But other countries, such as Norway, also eat a lot of fish but don’t have low heart disease rates.

My visits to Japan suggest to me that Japanese eat far more fermented foods than people in other countries, including Norwegians. If heart disease is due to infection, then it’s clear that the immune stimulation provided by fermented foods helps fight infection. My umami hypothesis — that we like umami, sour, and complex flavors to encourage bacteria consumption, which we need to be healthy — began with a trip to Japan in 2008, when I noticed, in a food court, many types of miso for sale. Back in Berkeley, I started making miso soup. I was stunned how well it worked. All you needed was miso. No other flavorings. It was so easy and good I ate it every day. It was my first bit of evidence that fermented foods are different and better than other foods.

Here are some fermented foods that are easy to get in Japan:

1. Miso soup. Most Japanese eat this daily. In a few countries, such as France, many people eat yogurt daily. Koreans eat kimchi daily. In most countries, as far as I know, it’s hard to find a fermented food (apart from cheese and alcoholic drinks) that’s eaten daily by most people. Miso is also used to flavor fish.

2. Japanese pickles. The best pickles in the world. Some are pickled as long as as two years, developing noticeable alcohol. Other countries have pickles, of course, but as far as I know the only pickle restaurants are in Japan. Moreover there are pickle shops in big Japanese cities. The only other pickle shops I’ve seen are in New York City.

3. Pickled apricots (umeboshi). At a food court you have a choice of acidity, anywhere from 5% (slightly sour) to 25% (extremely sour).

4. Vinegar drinks. Tokyo 7-Elevens sell a black vinegar drink. Vinegar and water. In food courts you can buy special vinegars for this purpose. I’ve never seen vinegar drinks for sale anywhere else.

5. Natto.

6. Yogurt. The Japanese yogurts I’ve tried were sweetened but weren’t as sweet as the yogurts sold in Beijing.

7. Yakult. The fermented milk drink. It’s sold in such small packages it’s pretty clear it must appeal to people who think it improves their health. It doesn’t boost energy, quench thirst, or taste especially good. The manufacturer says it is good for health and that one bottle per day is all you need.

8. Beer and wine.

Because soy sauce is used in small amounts, it doesn’t count. At a Tokyo restaurant I met a nurse who said she thought you should eat fermented foods every day to be healthy. She said perhaps a third of Japanese believe this.

I’ve never seen high Japanese consumption of fermented foods noticed by epidemiologists. Individual fermented foods (such as miso), yes; the whole category, no. You can see how hard it would be to combine across foods: how much miso equals how much Yakult? Yet I’m sure fermented food consumption is extremely healthy.

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Seth Roberts1 Comment

Thanks to Anne Weiss and Mark Griffith.

More Fermentation, More Anti-Cancer Effect

Seth Roberts3 Comments

Doenjang is a fermented soybean paste often served in Korean restaurants — as a vegetable dip, for example. This study found that the longer it’s fermented, the more powerful its anti-cancer action:

Doenjang fermented for 24 mo exhibited a two- to three-fold increase in antitumor effects on sarcoma-180-injected mice and antimetastatic effects in colon 26-M 3.1 cells in mice compared with the 3- or 6-mo fermented doenjang. The 24-mo fermentation was the most effective in preventing cancer by decreasing tumor formation and increasing natural killer cell activity in spleens and glutathione S-transferase activity in livers of mice.

Many things about doenjang stay roughly the same during fermentation. This study shows that what’s increasing (bacteria, etc.) is responsible for the anti-cancer effect, which supports my umami hypothesis (that we need fermented foods or something similar to be healthy).

I make yogurt rather than buy it so that I can ferment it a long time (e.g., 24 hours in a yogurt machine). The yogurt I make is much sourer than commercial yogurt.

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Seth Roberts1 Comment

Thanks to Michael Bowerman.