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Effects of a high fat diet on gut microbiome dysbiosis in a mouse model of Gulf War Illness, 2020, Kuhn et al

Discussion in ''Conditions related to ME/CFS' news and research' started by Andy, Jun 14, 2020.

  1. Andy

    Andy Committee Member

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    Open access, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-66833-w
     
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  2. Midnattsol

    Midnattsol Moderator Staff Member

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    Looking beyond the problems with mice models, there are many dietary components that can influence the effect of a "high fat diet". And a HF diet is not a necessity for obesity..

    But I of course support the notion that diet should be part of treatment plans, it is a saly overlooked factor by many health care professionals. With disease comes a need for high quality nutrients to give the body the sustenance it needs to stay as healthy as it can. Disease alone is bad enough, no reason to make it worse by adding malnourishment on top.
     
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  3. Amw66

    Amw66 Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    I havnt read the paper, so apologies.
    What kind of fat was involved , and what proportion of fat to other macros .

    What proportion healthy v unhealthy fat?

    Was pancreatic/ liver function also checked?
     
  4. Mij

    Mij Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Increasing good fats in my diet was an improvement to my health. I eat a good amount of coconut oil too.
     
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  5. Arnie Pye

    Arnie Pye Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    I'm very suspicious of research done using mice where the factor being studied is related to diet in some way. Until I just read it in wikipedia I wasn't aware that mice are herbivores when they have a choice of food available, although they will often eat as omnivores if they have no choice.

    The thing I'm suspicious of is laboratory food for mice used in research. It isn't something that is bought from the local grocery store. What is used instead is something referred to as "mouse chow" and it is completely unlike any food that a mouse would eat given the choice. There are different formulas for mouse chow, so one experiment may require mice fed on Mouse Chow No.6 and another one may require mice fed on Mouse Chow No. 3A or something like that. The fats will often be ones that don't exist in nature. The protein may be produced in a laboratory, and the carbs won't be something that grows it will often be some form of fake rubbish that also won't be like mice would eat by choice.

    It is known that fats of different kinds have different effects on human health, some good, some bad. If the mice were fed a diet described as "High Fat" but the fat was all just specific fractions of Canola Oil they wouldn't be healthy.

    And the point of this research was to see if there was a difference in the microbiome of mice fed one diet or another where one of the diets was high fat. Well, if the fat used was fake then the HF-diet mice could well be more unhealthy than the ones that were fed less of the fake fat and instead ate some other form of mouse chow.

    If you were to actually test a person who ate a high carb diet and compare their microbiome to that of someone who ate a carnivore diet then of course their microbiome would change. It doesn't take an experiment to do that. If I cut down on my sugar/carb intake and started eating more fish (yuck!) my microbiome would change too.

    My first assumption having read the abstract was that it was based on research trying to find a way of blaming the sufferers, and as a bonus, to incidentally create more ammunition to heap scorn on a high fat diet.
     
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  6. Midnattsol

    Midnattsol Moderator Staff Member

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    They used this one: https://researchdiets.com/formulas/d12451 , fat nearly all lard with the rest being soy. Now, I don't mind a bit of animal fat or saturated fats, but they seem to increase LPS translocation from the gut to the bloodstream more than unsaturated fats do, which could increase inflammation. Did a search in the study and no mention of liver or pancreas.

    The carb sources are not especially good either.

    @Arnie Pye Those are good points, there are many issues with using these types of chow. Our diets are not all macronutrients and many micronutrients can ameliorate effects of say a HF diet in humans.

    But I don't see this as a way to blame sufferers, could you elaborate? We need research about how food affects us. The nutrition field is full of epidemiological studies of questionable value, comparing dietary patterns to the microbiome is another approach that to me is much better.
     
  7. rvallee

    rvallee Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    So is the US general population in that age range. That's a weird thing to focus on. Plus as we know it's a high sugar diet that leads to obesity.

    This is far too artificial to relate to real life.
     
  8. Midnattsol

    Midnattsol Moderator Staff Member

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    Same amount of sucrose and lard in the chow. I guess it would be called "highly palatable" and is designed to get the mice/rat obese quickly. And yes, it's very artificial, although not completely valueless. There are, unfortunately, many people who eat nutrient poor diets high in both fats and sugar, without the protective effects of say vegetables together with the fat.

    Even if one can't say human microbiomes will act in the same manner, several such studies provide can show a pattern that might be worth looking into in more detail. A study in Australia a few years ago looked at the microbiome of people following different diets, that was very nice to see.
     
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  9. Arnie Pye

    Arnie Pye Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    It was the reference to Gulf War Illness occurring in people who were overweight. But I'm sure many veterans, with or without Gulf War Illness, are overweight. If the Powers-That-Be can blame the people suffering from GWI for their own problems because they are overweight it takes the pressure of all sorts of people because they can avoid blame and heap it on the sufferers.

    I wouldn't object to a truthful and "honourable" piece of research if it came up with the notion that eating a different diet could make people with GWI healthier. But using mice fed an appalling diet as the means to do the diet research is just untrustworthy nonsense. At the very least they could have compared mice fed on a species-appropriate diet and compared them to mice on a similar diet but with different proportions of nutrients then I might find the results more trustworthy.

    There is also a lot of dreadful research being done on trying to save the current Standard American Diet (or the equivalent in other countries) and present it as healthy. High carb diets with highly processed food and lots of sugar (real or fake) are very profitable. If people start eating a diet which is healthier then profits from highly processed food and sugary junk will fall dramatically. And eating natural fats and oils is part of a species-appropriate diet for humans. Eating Canola Oil and Vegetable Oils isn't. The other issue is that Big Pharma wants to keep making profits from meds for diabetics and people with heart conditions. And the SAD has to survive in some form because it makes people sick, but not sick enough to stop them all from working.
     
  10. Midnattsol

    Midnattsol Moderator Staff Member

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    Sadly, that happens. We are trained to think of obesity as a problem (not to say that it's not, but sometimes it can't be the focus), and this shines through in a lot of papers.

    Here they should have just focused on the fact that a HF diet can alter the microbiome, no matter your weight this type of diet can cause gut dysbiosis. And then I mean specifically the artificial high fat high sugar diet where nutrients are added as powders.. A high fat diet in humans does not have to look like this (and a wild rodents diets certainly don't). It's a bit like doing behavioral research on rodents kept in small cages and believe this is their natural behavior, using a semi-natural environment could give very different results.
     
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  11. Arnie Pye

    Arnie Pye Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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  12. Midnattsol

    Midnattsol Moderator Staff Member

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    I agree with you there.
     
  13. Mij

    Mij Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    "These results add support to the hypotheses that dysbiosis in the gut microbiome plays a role in GWI and that life-style risk factors such as an unhealthy diet can accentuate the effects of GWI by impacting the gut microbiome. The reversibility of the effect of HF on the gut microbiome suggests new avenues for treating GWI through dietary intervention".

    Why not do the reverse and focus on people like me who were lean their entire life and ate a healthy diet but still became ill? Shocker. :laugh:
     
  14. Midnattsol

    Midnattsol Moderator Staff Member

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    I would love a prospective study like this! :thumbup:
     
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