Gut bacteria causes atherosclerosis?

(Bob M) #1

The article:

Basically, gut bacteria produce a molecule (imidazole propionate) that causes atherosclerosis.

They used humans, but the actual "causation’ comes from mouse studies, of which I’m not that big of a fan. That is, until there are human studies showing reduction of this molecule reduce or prevent atherosclerosis, I’m not going to believe this necessarily.

But it would help to describe why many people, including people on keto, get atherosclerosis.

Of course, they make all the statements I’ve come to hate (atherosclerosis is not “caused” by “fat”):

“The new results demonstrate that atherosclerosis is not only a disease caused by fat, but that it also has an inflammatory and autoimmune component, according to Sancho.”

And I think this is potentially misleading:

“The new study shows that blood levels of imidazole propionate are lower in people with diets rich in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fish, tea, and low-fat dairy products.”

According to the article: “Sancho and his colleagues acknowledge that further research will be needed to identify the specific strains of bacteria capable of producing the molecule”. In other words, they have no idea what bacteria cause this, so there’s no way to say that a high(er) fat keto diet wold not be beneficial.

But even in the LMHR (lean mass hyper-responder) study, where people who go on keto diets who are lean and get very high LDL levels (the supposedly “bad” “cholesterol” that “causes” atherosclerosis), many of them had little to no atherosclerotic progression (some even had lowering of the atherosclerosis), yet some had atherosclerotic progression if they already had atherosclerosis at the start of the test. If these high-LDL folks are having progression, regression, or no progression, that means to me that LDL itself is probably not causative. Something else must be causing atherosclerosis. Maybe it’s gut bacteria?

(Bob M) #2

I should mention that if certain gut bacteria causes atherosclerosis, one plausible option is to somehow “adjust” your bacteria. When I first started keto many years ago, there were people who were taking probiotics (the bacteria) and prebiotics (what the bacteria eat), and then having their poop tested to see what happened in terms of bacteria concentrations.

I had reached (almost a decade ago) the conclusion that this was a lost cause. This was because it is a challenge to adjust anything with your biome, they really have/had no idea what is “good” or “bad” bacteria, and the testing was terrible (send your poop to two different companies, get two different results; send poop from two different locations in the poop to the same company, get two different results; etc.). Maybe things have gotten better since then, I don’t know.

I believe that what you eat will adjust the bacteria in your biome, but by how much is hard to tell. And they’d have to know the “good” and “bad” bacteria, and what causes the “bad” bacteria to create this molecule, before we’d be able to do anything.

(Cathy) #3

I would think that a leaky gut would be more significant in terms of what good or adverse effects that the gut biome has on the health of the arteries. As I understand it, a leaky gut actually allows things into the ‘system’ that normally wouldn’t be allowed because the cells are damaged. :question:

My memory may be foggy since I delved into this topic probably 15 years ago and haven’t revisited since.

(Bob M) #4

Cathy, that could be true, and it’s something they didn’t look at. For instance, maybe that molecule is problematic only (or mainly) when you have leaky gut?

Unfortunately, I know zero about leaky gut.

(Central Florida Bob ) #5

Some time ago, so maybe the same time as this, there was talk that keto-adaptation changed the microbiome so much that we need different probiotics. The usual drug store/supermarket strains of bacteria weren’t effective.

Just about a year ago, I had a five year routine screening colonoscopy, and since then I’ve had a heck of a time getting “regular” again. Sometimes one batch of yogurt helps, others it doesn’t. Same with metamucil or other fibers, with one exception. If I’m having badly irregular bowels, I eat about a half ounce of Bare brand baked apples. The problem is that they are far from low carb foods. A half ounce is about 13 grams of carbs (total, not subtracting fiber).

While they are generally rather tasty, I dutifully weigh out portions because to me it’s medication.

Would a different probiotic help? My guess is that it could, but I’d have no idea what to buy.

It seems to me that optimizing the microbiome will someday be an enormous textbook, but right now, we don’t even have the Introduction written.

#6

That’s nuts! Sounds like an Antifungal! Just searched that one and there are tons of articles making that connection going back years!

Not surprising though, our guts can cause so many serious reactions in us, so many of my issues were all about gut bacteria, the not pooping right, my fake lactose intolerance, my BS food sensitivities (which were real, but not, because gut disbiosis was the driver of that) even the a lot of it as far as I’m concerned went into overdrive when all the fiber in my diet came out and then a ton more of it died off since it wasn’t being fed anymore.

(Selena Thomas) #7

Mouse studies aren’t the same as solid human data, and they haven’t even identified the exact bacteria making that molecule. The part about people with more veggies and whole grains having lower levels could just be correlation, not cause. And like you said, the LMHR cases show that high LDL doesn’t always lead to more atherosclerosis, so there’s probably more going on. Gut bacteria might play a role, but we definitely need more research to know for sure.