Seasons in the (Vaginal) Microbiota

Do me a favor and click on that picture. It's one of the first images I've ever seen that illustrates the ("average") human microbiota! I'm really loving the Lactobacilli section-- check out all that pink! One drawback of this graphic is that it doesn't show changes and cycles of local microbiota-- though to be honest, a 3D animation would be necessary to depict that AND the variety of species listed. It's true: like all ecosystems, the local microbiotas in our skin, mouth, gut, and genitals go through seasons.

It's crazy to think of how our local microbiotas change as we age, let alone the cycles they go through on a regular basis. The best example I can give is of the vagina and its veritable forest of Lactobacilli. A healthy vaginal microbiota is associated with a lot of Lactobax, but most women experience an increase of anaerobic bacteria during their periods. These anaerobic bacteria aren't exaaactly pathogenic, but many are associated with bacterial vaginosis and that weird fishy smell (good morning, ladies!). The chart below shows the changes in the microbiota of two ladies' vaginas at different points in their menstrual cycles.

I'd be interested to know how the vag forest would be affected by, or whether it might have an effect on, irregular periods. On a side note, I found this seed supplement regimen today that's supposed to help balance hormones for ladies with irregular cycles. It's simple and seems really effective.

Anyway, here's the gem of a study I got the above chart from. Happy Saturday!

Classy Colonization

Living the good life-- the well-colonized one, that is. Ginger kefir with lime and plenty of organisms.

On Epigenetics

When I was in seventh grade, I learned that our genes can't be changed, ever. Once we go from gamete to fertilized egg, that's it. Stuck for life. They even mentioned some poor schmuck who thought that genetic evolution due to behaviors (i.e., changes that didn't involve actual gene mutations) could be passed onto later generations. Ha! Hahaha!

Fast forward four years. I'm in high school now, and my AP Bio teacher is telling me that yeah, we have these genes, but some of them can get turned on and off, kinda like light switches. That the genes themselves are recipes, and the ribosome is the kitchen-- but who controls which meals are created, and when?

I didn't learn the word epigenetics until college, but by the time I did, I understood exactly what it meant. Epigenetics is the concept of the chef in the cooking metaphor-- it's the factors that control gene expression. Things like histone modification and DNA methylation, markers that promote or downregulate the use of those recipes. These physical modifications that surround DNA send messages like, "hey guys, let's, like, never transcribe this POKEMON gene." (Yes, there was a cancer gene that was called POKEMON... until Nintendo threatened to sue.)

The ways in which epigenetics manifests, or has the potential to do so, are nuts. Things like grandchildren of famine survivors being more susceptible to diabetes; chemical exposure resulting in disorders that persist through generations; and maybe even sexual preference.

Epigenetics is interesting to me because it's super relevant to the interactions between the microbiota and the human immune system. Certain microbes have the ability to flip genes on and off (for better or for worse) in susceptible individuals. Sometimes this is good: many people take probiotic supplements because they promote anti-inflammatory pathways and a tolerant immune system. On the other hand, some pathogenic bugs cause inflammation and sickness, even cancer.

It also makes our diet seem that much more important, like a drug we feed ourselves constantly. I think of the many stories I've heard of autoimmunity or cancer being reversed or vastly tempered through dietary modifications*, and I am amazed. It's both heartening and terrifying to know that we have the power to influence our biological makeup, simply by adjusting our everyday habits. It puts the onus on the individual to act in her best interests: eat right for your body, sleep enough, exercise, brush your teefs. Sometimes it isn't enough, but sometimes that's all it takes. Epigenetics is the bridge connecting the duality of nature vs. nurture; it's a clear demonstration of the capability of our environment to influence our phenotype (genetic output) and those of our progeny.

Personally, I think RuPaul says it the most eloquently.

*obv this is not par for the course, but I think we can all agree that it happens and is amazing, right?

Healing Leaky Gut Syndrome with Ecoimmunonutrition

Leaky guts happen, and they happen for a variety of potential reasons. They're associated with chronic inflammatory conditions including(but not limited to, obv) Candida overgrowth, psoriasis, autism, type 1 diabetes, and IBS. Although these disorders manifest differently on the outside, their pathophysiologies all have leaky gut in common.

So why does it matter if your gut permability is increased? Well, a few reasons. First, leaky gut is associated with an imbalanced gut forest. That means that pathogenic bacteria and yeasts are dominating the microbial population and generally being jerks. Second, if those nasty microbes escape the holding cell of your intestines and make it into your bloodstream, that pisses off your immune system, which has to deal with the mess. Lastly, in your immune system's smothering rage, it will stop being able to tell what is you and what is not you, and you could end up with an autoimmune disorder. Don't believe me? Take a closer look at this quote from that Wikipedia article:

"Together with the gut-associated lymphoid tissue and the neuroendocrine network, the intestinal epithelial barrier, with its intercellular tight junctions, controls the equilibrium between tolerance and immunity to nonself-antigens. When the finely tuned trafficking of macromolecules is dysregulated in genetically susceptible individuals, both intestinal and extraintestinal autoimmune disorders can occur." (Fasano and Shea-Donohue, 2005)

Now, this is all very depressing, of course. Nobody wants a leaky gut, and nobody wants autoimmunity going on in their bodies. But wait! What's that on the horizon? A bird? A plane?

IT'S ECOIMMUNONUTRITION!

This study, published in China in 2009, found that "Application of ecoimmunonutrition can protect intestinal mucosal barrier in rats with operative stress, increase the expression of occludin, maintain the gut epithelial tight junction, and eliminate gut bacterial translocation." Epigenetics FTW!

So what is ecoimmunonutrition, exactly? From my understanding, it's basically supplementation with probiotics and maybe some other immunomodulatory functional foods. I like the word, though. It looks like it was coined in Sweden all the way back in 1998 (!!!), when Will Smith was gettin' jiggy and Palmolive still made dish soap with antibiotics in it. Go Swedes!

Of course, there are other ways to treat a leaky gut: Candida diets, specific carb diets, blah blah blah. This method is by far the coolest and most integral, though, because neither of those diets work as efficiently or as well without probiotic supplementation. Also because it involves eating bacteria... duh.

L

PS The kefir is freaking delicious.

Ingesting Ecosystems: Grow and Eat Your Own Self-Propagating Probiotics!

No, but for real. This study came out about a week ago, and it's one of the first to use non-culturing methods to identify microbial populations in water kefir grains. Super important-- when researchers did that to ladies' coochie snorchers, they discovered organisms that they never imagined were part of the vagina forest. Besides the obvs (Lactobacilli), they found a heck of a lot of Bifidobacterium strains in kefir samples, which is promising for those with digestive issues.

I ordered some kefir grains from a random seller on etsy. By chance, he lives less than 20 minutes away from me, so the kefir grains pictured above contain fairly local microbes. I reconstituted them earlier this week, and now I'm making my first batch of kefir.

Anyway, I am super excited for the microbial revolution to start in my digestive tract. Will let you know how it goes.

L

Homeopathy and Immunology

First of all, I want to make it clear that the words "homeopathy" and "holistic" are not interchangeable.

Holistic, an adjective, can be tacked onto any noun. It's a lot like "natural" or "organic"-- used to the point where it's been stripped of a lot of its original meaning. Holistic doesn't mean holy or arcane or even more natural; it simply means taking the whole into account.

Homeopathy is a branch of alternative medicine which is based on the concept that highly diluted amounts of certain molecules (depending on the disorder) can stimulate the body to heal itself. A lot of people (including the ones who contributed to the Wikipedia page on homeopathy, linked above) dismiss homeopathy on the grounds that it's pseudoscience or completely refutable.

I am not a firm believer in homeopathy, but I do not deny the possibility that it could work on some unperceived level. Mostly, it reminds me of desensitization therapy for severe food allergies. Also called oral immunotherapy, it is what it sounds like: desensitizing the immune system to an allergen by administering it sublingually in extremely small doses. It's kind of a stretch to try to make any solid connection with that and homeopathy, though, so I usually keep my mouth shut when the subject of homeopathy comes up.

Today, though, I read this article and was pretty surprised. Apparently, homeopathic medicines actually have nanoparticles of the diluted substance in them; a few Nobel laureates are really into homeopathic research; and hormesis, a widely accepted field of science which studies the effects of small doses, exists! This collection of writings on hormesis and homeopathy was also originally published last year as a special issue of Human and Experimental Toxicology.

The article I linked to explains everything way better than I can; I wanted to mention it here because I think that it could have a lot of implications for/involvement with the immune system and the microbiome. It could be some crazy electromagnetic sub-cellular language. Or, it could be complete quackery. I guess time will tell, but one thing's for sure: funding for that kind of research will be pretty scarce, especially here in the States.

A Quick Primer on Factory Farming and the Human Microbiome

***DISCLAIMER: Everything here is true, but some of it is strongly worded. I wrote this years ago when I was a vegetarian, and I don't feel like editing it. For those interested, now I buy organic meat to prepare at home, but I do eat non-organic meat when I eat at restaurants. Factory farming is still a big microbiological issue here in the States, though, so I try to be extra mindful of my meat consumption habits. L

Concentrated animal feeding operations, also known as factory farming, are a method of raising and keeping animals for slaughter. Most of the meat in the United States comes from factory farms. The model is profit-based, so generally the amount of animals per unit of land is maximized as much as possible. While this has provided affordable meat to American consumers for years, these types of farming practices do not come without cost.

There are a few issues here; many of them are purely organismic. Animals need things like clean food, fresh water, a place to relieve themselves, space to move, and sunlight. The more a meat company is concerned with profit, the larger a factory farming operation becomes. The larger an operation gets, the harder it is to provide all of those essential things. When those things are not provided to an animal-- that is to say, when conditions are not biologically sound or sustainable-- things start to stink. Really. The smell comes from the buildup of excrement of thousands of animals, kept in close quarters. It also likely comes from bacteria, multiplying exponentially in the wounds and bodies of these animals. It is no secret that antibiotics are fed to these animals "non-therapeutically"-- that is, regardless of whether or not the animal is sick. Sadly, the conditions in which these animals live make it necessary to do so. The use of antibiotics in livestock feed is a double-edged sword: it keeps the animals from getting too sick while being raised, but in the long run it contributes overwhelmingly to antibiotic resistance across metacosms.

To eat meat-- or anything, really-- is to assimilate that food into your body by breaking it down and using its component parts for fuel. We do not only assimilate nutrients, however; we assimilate the bacteria of our food and their genes into our systems. This is due to a unique property of bacteria called conjugation, which is a form of horizontal gene transfer. Because the bacteria doesn't have to reproduce to share genes, a gene becomes a piece of information that can be shared with friends. This is not so great when the gene in question enables survival in the face of antibiotics; it is even worse when the "friends" are the bacteria in your stomach.

It's strange to think about, but completely viable: the bacteria in your body can be resistant to an antibiotic you've never been on. The microbiotic pitfall inherent to factory farming is that it is an optimal breeding ground for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Besides altering the very genome of your microbiome, consuming meat from factory farms can also likely introduce new, unwanted species into your system.

And what can you, as a microbiota-containing human, do?

If you want to learn more about factory farming, I suggest reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.

If you're more interested in the microbiome aspect of this whole debacle, you should check out the book Good Germs, Bad Germs by Jessica Snyder Sachs.

You can reduce your meat consumption, buy organic meat (which may or may not help), or if you're really in a bind you could always go for one of these.