What A Science Muddle
I’ve said before that most so-called “scientists” today do not investigate the truth. They try to prove some pre-determined point of view (“We conducted a trial to prove that…” sort of approach) You can often tell what they are after by seeing what they chose to measure.
Here the industry is setting out to trash the reputation of probiotics (despite thousands of studies showing clear benefit). They chose yoghurt, NOT probiotics, but we’ll let that pass for the moment. This was with some pretty hokey “science”.
Not that the clinical findings can be ignored but that their interpretation of results could be way off the mark.
Goof #1: First of all they studied YOGHURT, not probiotics. There’s the world of difference. Yoghurt is a dairy food, which could be a major confounding problem, as we will see. Real probiotics for humans would be bifido bacteria, not lactobacillus, as in yoghurt.
Goof #2. Vagueness, not precision. “…if you inadvertently colonise your small bowel with probiotic bacteria, then you have set the stage for potentially developing lactic acidosis and brain fogginess,” says the study’s lead researcher and gastroenterologist Satish S.C. Rao. Note the use of the word “potentially”, not provably.
Goof #3. Probiotics plus sugar in food caused brain fogginess. Therefore the cause was the probiotics, they say, NOT SUGAR. That’s idiotic. Sugar causes brain fog and lethargy in all individuals, not just those taking probiotics.
Goof #4. “Probiotics should be treated as a drug,” Rao says, “not as a food supplement.” Since when is yoghurt a drug? But Rao says the experience of the patients he and his team clinically observed over three years shows nobody should casually or indiscriminately be taking probiotics without taking medical advice.
I think all that Rao and his team actually proved was that you should NOT take advice on probiotics from a trained doctor. You’ll get sick. That much he DID PROVE, incontrovertibly! The rest is mainly hogwash.
Dairy Allergy
Many years ago (1980s) I was interviewed by the BBC (before I got christened the world’s “Number One Allergy Detective” Sunday Mail 1990). I found myself saying that if I was allowed to ban just one food for humans, I’d ban milk. At a stroke I could cure hundreds of millions of individuals, from diseases such as migraine, irritable bowel, arthritis, eczema, diabetes and even cancer (they wouldn’t let me say the latter, of course).
Yes, I could have picked wheat. But on the spur of the moment I chose milk. It causes more misery, brain fog, emotional disturbance, wrecked organs, chronic fatigue, bowel disturbance, immune suppression and other mischief than even grains (DON’T write to me about raw milk. Milk carries and creates a whole raft of disorders).
Oxford don Robert Burton (1577 – 1640) wrote a great classic called The Anatomy of Melancholy (he himself suffered from severe depression from time to time).
But Burton was smart. He observed that, “Milk, and all that comes of milk, as butter and choose, curds, etc. increase melancholy (whey only excepted, which is most wholesome).” I’ve quoted all this in my diet masterpiece DIET WISE. He didn’t know what a food allergy was. But he knew well that milk can be a virtual poison.
So did Rao’s team eliminate milk allergy as a possible influence? Of course not. The idiots didn’t even seem aware that that’s what they were mainly measuring.
What They Did Find
One finding was incontrovertible: taking a lot of probiotics causes a lactic acidosis. That itself is enough to make a patient feel groggy and headachy. But we knew that, back in the 1980s, long before probiotics were on the rise.
In fact it’s caused by an allergic reaction, NOT probiotics bacteria.
Don’t get me started here because this is the origin of the deadly myth that eating “alkaline” foods and water cures every disease known to man. So does cider vinegar: aka. acetic acid! Both acid and alkali does the same job? Cure all?
This stupid myth needs to die because it KILLS people. About 50% of people with cancer will die quicker if they alkalize (Emanuel Revici). Have you ever read that on the Web with these self-styled health researchers? Of course not. They all circulate the same mistakes.
But we knew back in the day that if someone had a strong allergic reaction, he or she would turn rapidly acid (lower pH), mainly due to lactic acid. All it needed was a dose of “alkali salts” (2 parts sodium bicarb to 1 part potassium bicarb) to relieve the symptoms. We followed that with a mild laxative (Epsom salts) to clear the food residues from the bowel as quickly as possible.
I told all this in my book DIET WISE too!
The entirety of the rest of the myth about acid-alkali is just that: myth. Scientific nonsense. Your kidneys will not tolerate a departure from neutral pH. Drinking alkali water and swallowing “alkaline foods” (all foods are both acid and alkaline, even lemons!) just stresses your kidneys, which has to put things back how they should be!
If you ever felt better by avoiding “acid” foods then you were simply allergic to the food. pH has nothing to do with it.
My point? If you feel lousy taking probiotics, STOP! It will soon clear. Find another source. But you know the single quickest way to improve your bowel flora is not to supplement with probiotics at all. It’s to get keto on an intermittent fasting program. It works within hours, never mind weeks.
I told THAT story in another book: THE ULTIMATE SCIENCE OF WEIGHT LOSS
Bottom Line
Eat right, eat well and fast occasionally, you’ll be healthy and live long.
That’s also the answer to Rao’s silly study. Don’t eat sugar, in any form whatever. That causes overgrowth of bacteria, including probiotic organisms. That will result in feeling bad.
In the study, patients who reported confusion and difficulty concentrating — in addition to experiencing gas and bloating feelings — were found to be harboring large colonies of bacteria breeding in their small intestines, with high levels of D-lactic acid being produced by bacterial fermentation of sugars in their food.
They reported some striking cases, such as: One patient had recurrent near syncopal (fainting) episodes after carbohydrate-rich meals. Another patient’s symptoms caused her to be bed-ridden for up to a week after consuming a large carbohydrate-rich meal. But surely the cause is the sugar, not poor old lactobacillus microbes?
Another patient had symptoms of bloating and brain fog with a blistering rash on the palms. That’s surely a food allergy, not a probiotic reaction. Duh! C’mon Rao. You’re not even taking a stab at logic here!
Prof.
SOURCE ARTICLE: Clinical and Translational Gastroenterologyvolume 9, Article number: 162 (2018)