Gut health is a complicated topic and the current science we have isn’t very far in understanding it well.
The price for full gut flora sequencing is 159$ these days. If you have money to spend, actually measuring what going on with your gut flora and then measuring again after an intervention will make you less dependent on theory about interventions being right.
You have 100-200 species of bacteria which are together in a sort of Nash equilibrium. If you add new bacteria via oral probiotics, in many cases that won’t change the Nash equilibrium and thus the effect of the oral probiotics is temporary. There will be other cases where the Nash equilibrium changes.
If you change your diet than there are different nutrients available in your gut that shifts the Nash equilibrium automatically for as long as the change in diet lasts. In some cases, you would go back to the same Nash equilibrium if you change your diet back to your old diet and in other cases a new Nash equilibrium will be found.
It makes some sense that a fecal transplant that adds 100-200 different species in a mix that’s a working Nash equilibrium in a healthy person is more likely to help the patient to move to a new Nash equilibrium than adding three species of via a probiotic but it’s still a process with a lot of moving parts.
One aspect I have forgotten that might or might not be important (we don’t understand it well) is that in addition to bacteria species, phages also play a role and get transferred via fecal transplant. A newly introduced phage might reduce the numbers of the bacteria it targets.
Gut health is a complicated topic and the current science we have isn’t very far in understanding it well.
The price for full gut flora sequencing is 159$ these days. If you have money to spend, actually measuring what going on with your gut flora and then measuring again after an intervention will make you less dependent on theory about interventions being right.
You have 100-200 species of bacteria which are together in a sort of Nash equilibrium. If you add new bacteria via oral probiotics, in many cases that won’t change the Nash equilibrium and thus the effect of the oral probiotics is temporary. There will be other cases where the Nash equilibrium changes.
If you change your diet than there are different nutrients available in your gut that shifts the Nash equilibrium automatically for as long as the change in diet lasts. In some cases, you would go back to the same Nash equilibrium if you change your diet back to your old diet and in other cases a new Nash equilibrium will be found.
It makes some sense that a fecal transplant that adds 100-200 different species in a mix that’s a working Nash equilibrium in a healthy person is more likely to help the patient to move to a new Nash equilibrium than adding three species of via a probiotic but it’s still a process with a lot of moving parts.
That makes a lot of sense- this is definitely the sort of thing I was looking for, thanks so much!
One aspect I have forgotten that might or might not be important (we don’t understand it well) is that in addition to bacteria species, phages also play a role and get transferred via fecal transplant. A newly introduced phage might reduce the numbers of the bacteria it targets.