Phytochemicals, Natural Antibiotics and Antioxidants

Plants are mean and sneaky.  They are natural organic chemists and make the nastiest toxins on earth.  Never trust a plant.  Eat them at your peril… or because they taste good.

Phytoalexins

Plants are Fast and Lethal

I was shocked when people started to laud the virtues of phytochemicals.  I thought that they must have alkaloid poisoning.  My PhD training involved separating and measuring the antifungal chemicals produced by soybean cotyledons exposed to the wall polysaccharides of a pathogenic fungus.  The plants would go crazy and produce a witch’s brew of toxins to provide protection from the fungus.  I eventually wrote a chapter on these toxic natural antibiotics, phytoalexins, for the Encyclopedia of Science and Engineering.  All plants produce these chemicals and as one might expect, seeds/nuts are provided with special protection to avoid being digested.

Lignin

Plants are Natural Chemical Killers

I developed a profound respect for the ability of plants to protect themselves.  Fungal spores germinate on the surface of leaves and their slender, threadlike hyphae attach and glue themselves to the waxy outer surface and then forcefully and enzymatically penetrate to the spongy cells below.  When the tip of the hypha touches the wall of the underlying cell, the plant nucleus lurches as its cytoskeleton reorients.  The surrounding plant cells respond in sympathy and all of these neighbors mobilize their biochemical processes to kill everything in their vicinity.  In a few hours, the plant chemicals kill the cells producing them along with the pathogen, and would continue to kill more and more of the leaf, but plant cell walls also contain enzymes that convert the phytoalexins to more wall material, lignin, and protect cells outside of the influence of the fungus.  As lignin in wood and plant litter is slowly degraded by microorganisms, it forms humus, the natural organic material in compost and soil, and also releases a potpourri of potent plant phenolics like BPA.  Compost is also a rich source of cell wall polysaccharides, a.k.a. soluble fiber, that feeds soil bacteria.

Phytochemicals are Natural Antibiotics

Most phytochemicals have evolved in plants as pathogen or herbivore defenses.  Since the nervous system is adapted to detect other organisms, it is not surprising that plants target the sensory system, brain and nerves of herbivores, and we detect the flavor and smell of plants/herbs/spices by their defensive molecules.  All of the flavor and taste components of herbs and spices are phytochemicals that kill bacteria, fungi and other pathogens.  Nicotine and caffeine are insecticides.  A detailed, worldwide study showed that spices are used in specific global areas, because of the local availability of the spices and their effectiveness against local food storage pathogens.  People develop a taste for the plant defensive chemicals that they must be exposed to for sustenance.  Cuisine represents a knife edge that separates attractive stimulation from death.  Natural or organic does not mean safe or healthy.  Plants are as dangerous to eat as pufferfish.

Phytoalexins are Useful, but Be Very Careful

Perfume Ingredients

If a grape notices a nearby fungal pathogen, it produces its phytoalexins, including resveritrol, which is a notable “antioxidant” that has been recognized as contributing to longevity.  People are encouraged to drink red wine for the health benefits of its phytoalexins.  Most of the pharmaceuticals derived from plants are phytoalexins in disguise.  Of course, the evolutionary origins of phytoalexins as natural broad spectrum antibiotics, makes it no surprise that phytoalexins are commonly toxic, carcinogenic and very dangerous to fetuses.  Morning sickness has been explained as nature’s way of telling a mother carrying a vulnerable fetus to not eat plants and potentially phytoalexins.  It is wise for women to avoid plants, perfumes and essential oils during their first trimester.  Essential oils are phytoalexin extracts from plants and many of these components are the essence of perfumes.  These same chemicals, e.g. limonene, serve dual purposes as fragrances and paint strippers, recreational drugs and insecticides.  We can smell these natural plant chemicals, because they are attacking our nervous system.  Multipurpose mixtures of essential oils, such as Vick’s Vaporub, contain menthol, camphor, eucalyptus oil and terpentine that kill bacteria and fungi (toe nail fungus) and also stimulate cold/hot sensing nerves in the skin, which triggers endorphin production and reduces underlying joint inflammation.

Fruits are Fake Seduction

Fructose is fruit sugar.  That is very appropriate.  Fructose derivatives are the most central intermediates of central metabolism, glycolysis; glucose is immediately converted to fructose after it enters a cell as the fundamental source of energy and carbon building blocks.  Fructose is not normally transported in plants or animals, because it is too chemically reactive and toxic.  It rapidly bonds and crosslinks proteins and is ten times worse than glucose in forming AGE (advanced glycation end products) such as hemoglobin A1C.  If you feed fructose to cattle, it makes their meat tough by cross linking protein fibers and it does the same thing to human skin.  Fructose in fruit is a fake, because it is cheap and sweet.  Animals eat fruit hoping to find starch, which is the only polysaccharide that animals can convert to glucose with their own (not bacterial gut flora) enzymes.  Starch quickly becomes sweet, because amylase in saliva digests the long chains of glucose molecules of starch into shorter dextrins that trigger sweet sensors in the tongue.  Fructose masquerades as starch by binding to sweet sensors a hundred times more strongly than dextrins.  The evolutionary advantage to using fructose to make plants sweet is that it takes much less energy and carbon, and it also poisons insects and microorganisms.  That is why honey is made of equal amounts of fructose and glucose, rather than sucrose, for example.  Fructose in high concentrations is toxic to microorganisms and honey can be used to dress wounds.  I can’t understand why fruits, especially juices, are recommended as part of a nutritional diet.  At best, fruit should be converted into juice.  The juice should be discarded and the pulp eaten as a source of soluble fiber, pectin, to feed gut flora. 

Phytochemicals Must be Detoxified to be Edible

Bacterial and fungal pathogens must avoid detection by plants to avoid death by phytoalexins.  Insects, similarly must avoid preformed phytochemicals that would kill or poison them with their first bite.  Pathogens and pests that are effective on one species of plant cannot eat others with different chemical defenses; plants and their pests/pathogens are mutually adapted.  Primates browse on new shoots of many different types of plants, to avoid building up lethal doses of particular phytochemicals.  The same is true of humans, who also have intestines and livers that chemically treat and neutralize plant toxins.  These same human defenses determine the rate at which other related chemicals, i.e. pharmaceuticals, most of which are derived from phytoalexins, are transformed and excreted.  Turmeric contains curcumin, which is the most potent inhibitor of inflammation yet identified.  Unfortunately, curcumin is “detoxified” in the intestine and large amounts must be eaten to suppress inflammation.  Fortunately, pepper contains another phytoalexin, piperine, which inhibits the detox system, so that most cuisines that use turmeric combine it with black pepper.

Trade Your Liver for Vegetables

The liver is the only organ that can be continually regenerated and that is because humans have evolved to eat plants, and phytoalexins take their toll on the liver.  As plants are digested and absorbed in the small intestines and transported to the liver, phytoalexins accompany the nutrients.  Most of the phytochemicals are chemically detoxified by liver enzymes, but the phytoalexins kill some liver cells with each meal and some of the phytoalexins circulate in the blood and reach other tissues.  The phytoalexins are evolutionarily adapted to bind to proteins to disrupt essential enzymes of microorganisms and herbivores, and like pharmaceuticals to which they are chemically and functionally related, they have numerous side effects.  The chemical reactivity is what is detected as the “antioxidant” property of phytoalexins.  Antioxidant is nutritionally meaningless and basically reflects the chemical toxicity of phytochemicals.  After all, you can’t easily sell chemicals that are inherently toxic.  Meat and humans are made of the same easily digestible stuff, i.e. protein, fat, plus indigestible polysaccharides in connective tissue, i.e. chondroitin sulfate and heparan sulfate.  Plants are essentially anti-human and are made of protein, vegetable oils (omega-6), digestible starch, undigestible cell wall polysaccharides, undigestible lignin and toxic phytoalexins.  Humans have adapted to eating plants with liver enzymes, liver regeneration, gut flora (to eat otherwise indigestible polysaccharides, soluble fiber to produce short chain fatty acids) and elaborate cultural habits.  We avoid most plants as too toxic and have domesticated some to produce reduced and tolerable levels of phytochemicals.  Of course this also means that the domesticated, defanged crop plants have a hard time defending themselves and we have to continually worry about blights and pestilences, and end up applying our own witch’s brew of fungicides, pesticides, and herbicides.

Polyphenols and Hormesis
I am going to add a few comments on the benefits of phytochemical "antioxidants", a.k.a. polyphenols, to clarify what I think is a misuse of the term "hormesis", which I thought meant the dilution of a toxin until it reached a magic lower concentration which was beneficial.  The trade offs of phytochemicals are nicely discussed by the Whole Health Source blogger, Dr. Stephan Guyenet.  I just don't think that the benefit of toxic chemicals stimulating the body's own antioxidant arsenal is an example of hormesis.  The point is that phytochemicals always act as toxins and stimulate toxin defenses.  Phytochemicals don't act as anti-oxidants in the body, even though they stimulate antioxidant defenses at all concentrations.  They provide a dubious benefit of unnecessarily heightening defenses with concomitant energy expenditure at low amounts and net damage at higher amounts.

Hakuna Matata and Sip the Tea

Tea Fanatic

I seem to have painted a compromising picture of plants as less than the perfect food.  They are tough and potentially toxic.  Plants clearly don’t like to be eaten and the best that can come of eaten plants is a full belly and a damaged liver.  But if you cook or ferment the plants first and bacteria start to digest and dull the chemical arsenal, plants can be safely and perhaps even enjoyably eaten.  We need not eat just safe meat.  We can also kick back and sip the tea.

Gut Flora Risk and Repair

….All 190 posts here….

The two most important contributors to health are diet and gut flora.  All of the other contributors, such as exercise, genetics, environmental toxins, hygiene, etc. are of minor importance.  A healthy diet, such as The Anti-Inflammatory Diet that I recommend on this blog, is simple and relatively easy to follow after weaning from the Standard American Diet.  One version of the healthy diet is just eating meat, fish, eggs, dairy and plenty of vegetables, but avoiding vegetable oils and grains.  Most people will be healthy with that general diet, but if and only if, they also have a healthy gut flora that is adapted to the food they eat.

Most people make themselves sick by not matching their gut bacteria to what they eat, so let me repeat the main point of this article:

You will get sick if the bacteria in your colon can’t digest your food.

And sick means allergies, autoimmunity, cancer, etc.

Read and Heed or Dead

What Killed American Gut Flora?

There are hundreds of different species of bacteria growing on partially digested food (soluble fiber) in your colon.  Americans are sick, not because they are too poor to buy food, but because they have the worst, i.e. least diverse, gut flora in the world.

Do:  We pick up, recruit, eat new bacteria and repair our gut flora by:

• touching surfaces, people, pets, etc. and putting our fingers near our mouths,
• eating live fermented food, or semi-clean vegetables,
• not cooking/killing/sanitizing all of the bacteria around us,
• eating probiotics and transferring some of their genes to our gut flora.

Don’t:  We wipe out or reduce the diversity of our gut flora by:

• using inappropriate hygiene that kills the bacteria we need for health,
• taking antibiotics that kill gut flora and compromise our immune system,
• trying to eat a wide variety of foods, which is counterproductive and only permits a few varieties of bacteria to survive.

Hygiene Kills Beneficial Bacteria

Nothing comes from nothing…  For bacteria to come out, bacteria must go in.  You have to eat bacteria to extrude them by the pound.  Each day a single bacterium growing and dividing in your gut once per hour will produce a million daughter bacteria (24 doublings, estimate that doubling two, ten times is about a thousand, and 1000X1000= million.)  So if you mixed a milligram (about the size of the period at the end of this sentence) of gut bacteria with ample food, you would have a kilogram (pounds) of bacteria by the end of the day.  Similarly, it takes about a day for a single bacterium applied to a petri dish of nutrient agar to produce a colony weighing about 10 milligrams.  The point here, is that a single bacterium that makes it through the acid bath of the stomach can be a major player in your colon in a couple of days.  This is a very good thing.  We want to kiss babies, because babies systematically vacuum up bacteria from the darkest  of corners and with shameless generosity present them in an irresistible pucker.  We need those bacteria, and so do the babies.  Hygiene, e.g. antibacterial hand soap, bleaching surfaces or closing toilet lids isolates people from potential sources of beneficial gut bacteria. 

Traditional Food is Fermented (with Live Bacteria)

Shockey

In most cultures, extra food is mixed with something like salt or spices to kill local problem microbes and then bacteria are permitted to grow.  The result is fermentation of the sugars available in the food with production of organic acids, e.g. vinegar, that stop the growth of other bacteria that might grow on protein and cause objectionable flavors.  Homemade fermented veggies contain a wide variety of happenstantial bacteria that can adapt to productive gut growth.

Cooking Kills

We cook to dissolve and soften foods.  Meat can be eaten whole and our stomach enzymes will easily digest the protein and fat to provide all of our nutritional needs.  The only plant material that can be digested by our enzymes is starch.  The rest of the plant requires cooking to make the protein available and the remaining carbohydrates, soluble fiber, require digestion by hundreds of different enzymes produced only by microorganisms.  Cooking will release soluble fiber to feed gut flora, but it also kills bacteria, so some raw foods must be eaten to make sure that the gut is always supplied with fresh bacterial recruits.  Cooked or pasteurized foods do not contain live bacteria and are not useful as sources to repair gut flora.

Probiotics are not Gut Flora

Commercial probiotics are made from bacteria used in dairy products (dairy probiotics) or bacteria used to make enzymes in other products, such as laundry detergents.  

These bacteria can be repackaged and sold as probiotics, because they have already been tested for toxicity.  These bacteria don’t normally grow in the gut and if you swallow them, they just pass through.  These “probiotics” can temporarily provide some of the functions of gut flora, because they are bacteria, but they don’t grow in the gut.

Gut Flora are Bacteria Created in the Gut

Gut bacteria produce chemical signals that coordinate the metabolism of food by hundreds of different species of bacteria.  We call these chemical signals vitamins, because humans extract the vitamins from the bacterial biofilms that always line the gut, so humans don’t need to produce their own vitamins.  Gut flora can produce all of the vitamins that we need, so it is not surprising that multivitamins do not provide any health benefit and concentrated vitamins my be harmful by disrupting normal metabolism of gut flora.  Biofilms also promote the exchange of genes between different species of bacteria, so the concept of species does not actually apply to gut flora, where new species are rapidly being created.  A common example of this process is the curing of lactose intolerance by simply eating small amounts of live yogurt for a couple of weeks.  The cure results from the transfer of a gene that produces an enzyme to digest lactose from the yogurt probiotic bacteria to the regular gut bacteria.  The new species, a natural GMO, continues to grow in the gut, digest lactose, and cure lactose intolerance.  The yogurt probiotics just get flushed away and that is why dairy probiotics must be eaten continuously to provide some of the benefits of healthy gut flora.

Antibiotics Kill Gut Flora, Compromise the Immune System and Cause Disease

Antibiotics are a huge benefit in curing and avoiding infectious disease.  Unfortunately, antibiotics can cause lasting damage by killing beneficial species of bacteria of the gut flora.  Loss of essential bacteria is commonly seen as food intolerances (true food allergies are rare) or constipation.  Since gut flora are needed for development of both the aggressive and suppressive parts of the immune system, which occurs in the lining of the gut, then antibiotics slowly lead to loss of function of the immune system that leads to autoimmunity or allergies.  Probiotics typically administered following antibiotic treatments do not repair the gut flora and leave the immune system damaged and prone to autoimmune diseases and allergies.

Variety in Foods Leads to Loss of Diversity in Gut Flora

It may be more entertaining to eat a new cuisine at each meal, but it confuses your gut flora.  Your gut is a river that endlessly moves food from mouth portal to pottie.  Bacteria divide and eddies cast some of the bacteria back to mix with food upstream before inevitably moving with the masses down and out.  Bacteria that don’t multiply as quickly as others eventually become extinct.  Bacteria that grow well on broccoli may wither with onions.  If you continue to eat some broccoli and some onions, then your gut flora will adapt, but if the type of polysaccharides, the soluble fiber, changes continuously, then you will end up with the stunted gut flora of Americans.  Diversity of gut flora is reduced by too much variety in food.

Matching Food to Gut Flora Takes Time

All of the gut problems that people complain about, gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, food intolerances/allergies (except gluten and a couple of others), etc. are due to a mismatch between food and the digestive enzymes of gut flora.  Modern food processing retains protein, fat and starch and removes the polysaccharides/soluble fiber that reaches the colon, feeds gut bacteria and produces short chain fatty acids (acetic acid, butyric acid, propionic acid) that feed the colon and reduce inflammation.  It takes time for gut bacteria to adapt to new soluble fiber in new foods by recruiting or creating new bacteria, and this is only possible, if inappropriate hygiene is avoided or if homemade fermented foods are eaten.

Dr. Oz Diet and Gut Flora Myths

….All 190 posts here….

I just watched a Dr. Oz program on health myths, including corrections, such as recognition of the high fructose content of agave syrup (especially bad for diabetics.)  So I thought I would go ahead and correct some of the perspectives on his show that I don't think are supported by biomedical research.

The Big Truth about Diet and Gut Flora

Health results primarily from a matched Diet AND Gut Flora, with minor contributions by exercise, personal genetics, environmental toxins, etc.  You can eat the extremes of just meat or only vegetables or any mixture and be healthy, as long as your gut flora is made up of about two hundred different species of bacteria that can fully digest the soluble fiber in your diet.  Health requires a gut flora adapted to your diet.  Those bacteria, the gut flora, produce all of your needed vitamins, eliminate constipation, block inflammation and control the development of your immune system, which takes place in the lining of your intestines in response to gut bacteria.

Assorted Health Truths

Truth:  Saturated fats are healthy, but polyunsaturated omega-6 vegetable oils are inflammatory.  Oz can't bring himself to read the literature and acknowledge the heart benefits of saturated fats and meat.

Truth:  Soluble fiber, e.g. pectin in fruit or inulin in leeks or chondroitin in meat, is healthy food for gut flora, but insoluble fiber, such as in whole grains is a scam and just sucks out micronutrients.  Oz could really help the public by explaining that the hundreds of different polysaccharides produced by plants, i.e. soluble fiber, are digested by hundreds of different enzymes in gut flora.  Gut flora digest soluble fiber into sugars that are converted into short chain fatty acids that feed intestinal cells.

Truth:  GMOs have been studied intensively, are relatively boring and healthy, but organically grown veggies have not been shown to provide any additional health benefits over conventional.  Oz adheres to a very political line and attacks GMOs without any reasoned arguments and touts organic veggies without reference to supporting research.

Truth:  Grass grown beef has healthier fats with more omega-3 oils, but omega-3 plant oils, such as ALA in flax, provide only minor benefits and can't substitute for the long chain DHA and EPA in fish/algae oil.  Oz keeps pushing flax seed even though the benefits are minimal and the problems of high insoluble fiber have not been tested.

Truth:  Constipation is a sign of unhealthy gut flora and can lead to autoimmune disease, allergy or food intolerance, but laxatives such as magnesium only fix the symptoms and not the missing essential gut bacteria.  Oz is really confused about constipation and focuses on dehydration rather than the bacterial content of stools.

Truth:  Antibiotics may be essential for surgery or life threatening bacterial diseases, but antibiotic-damaged gut flora must be repaired (not just probiotics) or the immune system will be compromised.  Antibiotics are major contributors to autoimmune disease and I don't think that Oz realizes the damage that he starts or continues by not repairing gut flora after he repairs hearts.

Truth:  Dairy probiotics, e.g. Lactobacillus or Acidophilus, can provide a quick fix for some functions of gut flora, but these limited probiotic bacteria do not survive in the gut and do not substitute for normal gut bacteria.  I think that Oz still sends his patients home with yogurt after heavy antibiotic treatment and leaves his patients with damaged gut flora and long term disease risk.

Truth:  An Anti-Inflammatory Diet can reduce sources of inflammation that is the foundation for cancer, autoimmunity, allergy and most diseases, but adding new bacteria (not dairy probiotics) through social contacts and live fermented foods is essential for a healthy gut and immune system.

Truth:  All needed vitamins are supplied by healthy gut flora (as biofilm chemical signals) and healthy people do not benefit from multivitamin supplements, but people with damaged gut flora, e.g. because of antibiotic use or autoimmune disease, may require specific vitamins.

Truth:  Antioxidants are just plant defense chemicals, i.e. plant antibiotics, that are unimportant in general health, but they may alter gut flora in unpredictable ways.  Oz likes all antioxidants, but can't explain why these generally toxic chemicals are not used by plants as antioxidants.

Truth:  All of the vitamin D that we need is supplied by minimal skin exposure to sunlight, but most Americans are vitamin D deficient, because chronic inflammation blocks solar production of vitamin D in the skin.  Oz doesn't seem to understand the role of inflammation in vitamin D deficiency.

Truth:  We don't need Grains and other sources of starch, but grains also typically cause health problems, e.g. sensitivity, intolerance or celiac, for most people and can cause inflammation of the gut and disruption of the gut flora that can lead to autoimmune diseases.  Most thyroid disease and back problems are autoimmune diseases that start with celiac.  Oz still promotes whole grains even though added bran lowers nutritional quality and many people are healthier without grains.  He also seems to ignore the relationship between grain, antibiotics and autoimmune disease.

Truth:  Breakfast is not a necessary meal and there are health benefits to lengthening the time between the last and first meal of the day, but if breakfast is eaten, it should be low in sugar and starch, i.e. avoid cereal, since cereal causes a severe spike in insulin when eaten after a fast.  Breakfast makes you hungry, because even protein in the morning will raise insulin and cause an eventual abrupt drop in blood sugar that is experienced as hunger.  Why does Oz believe in breakfast?

Truth:  Food intolerances and allergies (rare) are due to missing species of gut bacteria, but these eating problems cannot be fixed by diet alone, since new bacteria (other than dairy probiotics) must be eaten.  Dairy probiotics are only useful to cure lactose intolerance.

Truth:  Hygiene should be minimal, because most people repair damaged gut flora due to antibiotics, for example, by intimate contact with friends and pets.  Antimicrobial soaps and sterile home surfaces prevent gut flora repair, because the vast majority of bacteria killed by hygiene are beneficial.  Appropriate hygiene is a real problem for Oz and he is obsessed with closing toilet covers.

Truth:  Cardiovascular disease starts with inflammation and is aggravated by fat deposits, but statins and lowered serum cholesterol only reduce heart attack risk, because statins have a weak side effect of lowering inflammation.  Diet changes and repair of gut flora, e.g. my Anti-Inflammatory Diet, fish oil supplements and wild fermented foods, are much more effective at reducing inflammation and curing cardiovascular disease without the severe risks of statins.  Oz is slowly becoming skeptical of statins, but still hasn't read the research literature critically.

Truth:  Poor health and most diseases have only minor genetic risk factors, but diet and gut flora are "inherited" directly and shared by the whole family.  When your doctor asks what diseases run in your family, she is asking about your shared gut flora.  Oz still gives the impression that genes are significant in disease and for example asks audience members if relatives have had heart disease.  He should tell them to repair their gut flora!

Summary Diet Truths

Truth:  There is nothing magic about healthy foods.  All that is needed are protein (meat, fish, eggs, dairy, beans, etc.; plant and animal proteins are equivalent), fats (from leaf and meat, not omega-6-rich seeds) and soluble fiber (to feed gut flora) from their original sources to retain naturally abundant micronutrients (vitamins, except C, are usually unimportant.)  That is my Anti-Inflammatory Diet and supplements should not be needed.  Natural, local foods are healthy, but there are no super foods and exotic does not mean better.  Variety does not compensate for low quality.  Your gut flora needs time to adjust, especially to new soluble fiber, so just change foods with the seasons, not daily, and make sure that you are sampling new bacteria in live fermented foods to make your gut community adaptable.

Dr. Oz’s Pain: Constipation and Bursitis

Dr. Oz has complained several times about his constipation and the pain he feels in his shoulders during surgery.  He has recommended numerous treatments.  Since I feel a friendly affection toward Mehmet after talking/shouting at his image on the screen for hours, I think that I should give him some advice to relieve his pain.

Hot, Cold, Topical Treatments Are Effective, but Don’t Penetrate Themselves

Dr. Oz keeps talking about how various topical applications penetrate the skin.  He has even recommended the use of an electrical system to carry pain relieving steroids into his tissue by what looks to be electrophoresis.  This is dubious.  I would recommend that he stick to the topical chemicals, e.g. capsaicin, menthol, that target the hot and cold sensors of the superficial layers of the skin and result in deep penetrating nerve signals that trigger anti-inflammatory responses in the underlying bursa.

Constipation Is Caused by Damaged Gut Flora or Dysbiosis

Dr. Oz, like most physicians, does not usually explain the causes of diseases, such as bursitis.  Unfortunately, when he tries to explain problems, such as constipation, he overlooks important aspects of the problem for a facile physical model.  In the case of bursitis, it is important to realize that the patient, Dr. Oz, is also constipated.  Constipation can be aggravated by dehydration or “holding it”, but in Dr. Oz’s case, the combination of bursitis, an autoimmune disease, with constipation (and gas) suggests the more complete explanation of dysbiosis or damaged gut flora.  Dysbiosis is what causes constipation, because bowel stools, poop, is mostly packed, hydrated bacteria that grow in the colon by digesting soluble fiber.  If you eat an apple a day, there is enough pectin and other plant polysaccharides, i.e. soluble fiber, to increase the volume of the stools to make one regular.  [Don’t be confused by the misconception promoted by Dr. Oz that the volume of stools results from insoluble fiber, such as in whole grains.  The husk part of whole grains is useless or unhealthy and grains in general are not needed for a healthy diet.]  

Flush Toilet Hero

Dr. Oz’s constipation suggests a damaged gut flora.  Since he is a physician, one would suspect that he has used antibiotics in the past few years and wiped out essential types of gut bacteria.  Dr. Oz probably followed his own advice and attempted to patch up his damaged gut flora with probiotics.  Unfortunately, as I have repeatedly explained, dairy probiotics don’t survive in the gut and cannot repair damaged gut flora.  But Dr. Oz is even harder on his gut flora.  He has recommended the use of colloidal silver throat spray when he has been exposed contagious germs.  Silver, although ineffective for its intended use, is very toxic to gut flora after it is swallowed.  Dr. Oz also subscribes to numerous approaches to house and body hygiene, which are probably occupational hazards for surgeons.  Hygiene is the enemy when it comes to ingesting bacteria lost to antibiotics.  The atomizing flush toilet is my gut flora hero for spreading contagious health.

Damaged Gut Flora = Damaged Immune System

Constipation is bad enough, but damaged gut flora can mean that some of the bacteria needed for the gut-based development of cells regulatory T-cells (Tregs) that keep the immune system under control, are missing.  Constipation can lead to deficient Tregs and that means a major predisposition to autoimmune disease and allergies.  [Fecal transplants cure autoimmune diseases and allergies.]  Antibiotics, silver, hygiene excesses and constipation suggest to me that Dr. Oz has been cruising toward some rude immunological sequelae.

Autoimmunity Results From Antibiotics, Dysbiosis and Compromised Tregs

Autoimmune diseases result when a trifecta of inflammation, compromised Tregs and appropriate antigens occurs.  Normally physical damage, such as abusive shoulder exercise, results in inflammation as the first step in healing.  The inflammation can rev up the immune cells in the local area of tissue damage and some of the proteins, such as lubricin, which lubricates the bursa, may have basic triplet amino acid sequences that lead to presentation to immune system cells.  But no antibodies against self tissues are produced, because the Tregs stop the process.  Healthy gut flora produce healthy Tregs and block autoimmunity.

Dr. Oz abuses his shoulder bursa during surgery, but it can’t heal properly, because he has damaged his gut flora and compromised his Tregs.  The result is the autoimmune bursitis from which he now suffers.  He can reduce the symptoms and inflammation with topical anti-inflammatory natural chemicals, but he needs to repair his gut flora to repair his Tregs and reduce autoimmunity.  In the mean time, he is contaminating his local environment, family and friends with his unhealthy bacteria.  I wonder if Dr. Oz’s friend, Dr. Mike Roizen also suffers from autoimmune diseases?

Prescription to Repair Gut Flora:  Anti-Inflammatory Diet, Soluble Fiber, Fermented Vegetables, Less Hygiene

KEEP YOUR TOOTH BRUSH NEAR THE OPEN TOILET 

Antibiotics, Gluten, Hashimoto's Thyroiditis and Baldness

My impression is that Hashimoto's is caused by a combination of an initial immune attack on the thyroid and incompetent regulatory T cells.  In most cases the immune attack on the thyroid is a secondary consequence of celiac/gluten intolerance, in which anti-transglutaminase antibodies attack transglutaminase bound to gluten in the intestines.  Transglutaminase  is an enzyme that is also produced by the thyroid (and hair follicles) and attack by celiac antibodies can enhance or inhibit thyroid hormone production (or baldness.)  Both Hashimoto's and celiac do not occur if the suppressive part of the immune system, i.e. regulatory T cells, is functioning.  

Antibiotics Compromise the Immune System

The major point here is that antibiotics disrupt normal bacterial biofilms that line the intestines and these healthy gut bacteria are required for development of regulatory T cells.  Compromise of Tregs leads to autoimmune diseases, e.g. celiac, Hashimoto’s and baldness, and also allergies.

Antigens/Allergens Have Basic Amino Acid Triplets

The antigens targeted in autoimmune diseases, e.g. tTG, anti-nuclear, TPO, and allergies form an obvious pattern.  All of these antigens and allergens have simple amino acid sequences (rare patches of three basic/positively charged amino acids) that enhance their presentation to the immune system to produce antibodies.  Nuclear proteins, for example, are frequent autoantigens and most of these proteins interact with nucleic acids (negatively charged) and have predictable patches of positively charged amino acids (arginine and lysine).  Other common autoantigens have basic amino acid (arg/lys) patches, because they interact with phospholipids (also negatively charged.)  Proteins with basic patches, e.g. HIV-TAT or heparanase, are also readily transported into cells and nuclei.  Peptides with these sequences are produced by action of stomach enzymes on proteins, e.g. milk lactoferrin, and are antimicrobial.

Allergies / Autoimmune Diseases Are a Predictable Consequence of Antibiotics

Doctors treat with antibiotics, but they fail to repair damage that they cause to gut flora.  The gut flora of most patients treated with antibiotics, especially those who are most fastidiously hygienic, never fully recover.  Constipation is a common symptom of severe dysbiosis and related immunoincompetence.  Probiotics are gut flora bandaids and do not survive as components of gut flora.

Gut bacteria are also needed for development of the aggressive part of the immune system.  Thus, autoimmune diseases can be treated with even more intense use of antibiotics, that will eliminate the rest of the immune system.  Since all vitamins are produced by gut flora as quorum sensing signals, antibiotics can also produce the exotic symptoms of vitamin deficiencies.

Antibiotics are essential to many therapeutic approaches, e.g. surgical procedures or therapy for chronic Lyme disease, but they must be used responsibly and treated patients must be subsequently tested to ensure a repaired gut flora and a functional immune system have been reestablished after antibiotics.  Long term antibiotic use needs special attention, e.g. deliberate Repair of Gut Flora or a fecal transplant.

Thus, I think that it is most likely that ever increasing antibiotic exposure and processed foods, coupled with obsessive hygiene have led to crippled gut flora (as observed in the simplified gut microbiomes of Americans), a net decline in suppressive Tregs and the observed increase of autoimmunity and allergies.  The competence of the immune system may be a major determinant in the course of infection with a pathogen that can produce chronic infections.

Dr. Oz on Gut Flora Repair

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Where is the hippo? Trying to repair a complex community of a couple of hundred different species of bacteria by just changing diet, is like a zoo trying to add hippos by building a new enclosure and supplying it with fodder. You can wait and wait, but you can't add new species without adding new species. Hippos don't appear by spontaneous generation and neither does E. coli or other gut bacteria. You have to ship in hippos from other zoos and after antibiotic-induced extinction of gut bacteria, you have to introduce or eat missing species of bacteria. Also just adding probiotics will not provide a lasting fix for damaged gut flora any better than adding more elephants or giraffes will improve the diversity of a zoo lacking hippos.

I am amazed that Dr. Oz and the medical industry can encounter symptoms of dysfunctional gut flora, e.g. constipation, food intolerance, autoimmunity, allergy, that are preceded by antibiotic treatment and not address the compromised species diversity of the gut. The involvement of gut bacteria in immune system function is documented in the biomedical literature. The lasting impact of antibiotics on gut bacteria is known. Then why do Dr. Oz and the rest of the medical industry just recommend probiotics, a half dozen different species of bacteria found in fermenting dairy products (think elephants and giraffes), to repair a decimated gut bacterial community? They seem to be perplexed and ask, "Where is the hippo?"

Generalizations about Gut Bacteria

Each healthy human maintains a subset of a couple of hundred of the couple of thousand different species of bacteria found in humans around the globe. The diverse community in each individual may differ in species, but has approximately the same complement of genes in people sharing the same diet.

• 1-200 different species of bacteria per person
• 1-2000 different species of human gut bacteria
• 1 million different genes among the different bacteria
• Most genes are involved in digesting plant carbohydrates, i.e. soluble fiber: inulin, pectin, fructans, algal sulfated polysaccharides, etc.
• Diet diversity, e.g. the Modern American Diet, reduces the diversity of the gut bacterial community, presumably because the rapid change in foods permits survival of only generalist bacteria that can digest many different foods.
• Simple diets produce gut flora diversity, but only if there is access to diverse bacteria.
• Health may result from diverse gut flora developed from a simplified diet and ample bacterial resources.
• Obesity and other diseases may result from simplified gut flora developed from a changing, complex diet and a sterile environment/isolation.
• Vegan and paleo extremes can lead to healthy gut flora diversity, if the gut bacterial community is permitted to adjust to the diet composition by avoiding rapid changes and providing diverse bacterial sources.
• Meat contains complex polysaccharides, e.g. glycosaminoglycans, such as chondroitin sulfate and heparan sulfate proteoglycans, which are bacterial fodder equivalent to soluble fiber.
• Probiotics are unique bacterial species that do not persist in the gut of adults, but dominate the gut of milk eating babies and stimulate development of the gut and immune system.
• Probiotic bacteria can temporarily provide developmental signals for immune system development that are normally provided by a healthy gut flora.
• Antibiotics cripple gut flora needed for development of the immune system.
• Common medicines have significant antibiotic activity and modify gut flora.

Damage to Gut Flora is Not Repaired by Diet Alone
There is little or no effort being made by the medical industry to develop approaches to repair gut flora damaged by disease, unhealthy diets or medical procedures. This is similar to a surgeon stepping away from removal of a diseased organ without closing the wound. Antibiotics leave a gut flora that will remain permanently damaged without systematic, monitored repair. It might also be suspected that disruption of gut flora by antibiotics and the introduction of large amounts of new foods, such as high fructose corn syrup and vegetable oils may contribute to or cause the modern prominence of obesity. After all, gain or loss of weight changes gut flora, obese individuals have damaged gut flora, and trading gut flora between fat and lean animals, trades weight gain/loss behaviors.

Sources of Bacteria to Repair Damaged Gut Flora

• We must eat new bacteria in order to replace bacterial species lost by antibiotics or unhealthy diets.
• Probiotics -- bacteria that aide gut function, commercially from dairy fermentation
• Fresh vegetables -- bacteria are on the surfaces of plants unless the vegetables are cleaned or cooked
• Fermented foods -- Bacterial growth leading to acid or alcohol production has beed used in the preparation and storage of many foods and provides a rich bacterial resource.
• Environment -- Bacteria are transferred to our hands and face from other people, pets and surfaces, unless hands and the body are continually washed. Sanitizers and frequent washing of hands and surfaces eliminate acquisition of environmental bacteria to repair damaged gut flora. Social isolation and hygiene block repair of gut flora.
• Replacement -- experimental replacement of damaged with healthy gut flora (fecal transplant) has been very effective in curing many diseases without significant risks, but is restricted by the medical industry.

Dr. Oz, Constipation, Soluble Fiber, Food Intolerance

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The medical industry doesn't seem to understand the basics about the interaction of gut flora with food and the immune system.

I respect Dr. Mehmet Oz for creating a media personality to communicate medical information for public consumption and I know that there are many constraints placed on his freedom to discuss his personal and professional insights on health. That said, it seems to me that the public Dr. Oz, the voice of mainstream medicine and to some extent the food industry, fails to understand some essential features of the transformation of food to poop.

Dr. Oz has described on his television series, the impact of major disease on diagnostic changes in the color and appearance of poop, but he doesn't seem to understand that poop is mostly bacteria that have grown in the gut. The major implication of the predominance of gut bacteria in poop is seen in constipation. The pounds of bacteria in the colon provide the bulk and hydration of the poop, and when the bacteria are not abundant, the result is compacted, undigestible dietary fiber, which is the hard poop of constipation. That is why antibiotics, which have the major effect of killing gut bacteria, result in constipation. Chronic use of antibiotics, or frequently even a single use, can produce prolonged constipation.

The impression that I get from listening to Dr. Oz discuss soluble fiber, is that these food polysaccharides pass through the small intestines and then contribute to the texture/hydration of poop. This would be the case, if there were not bacteria in the gut, because the only polysaccharides/carbohydrates digested by human enzymes in the gut are starch and sucrose. Plants (and animals) produce hundreds of other types of polysaccharides that can only be digested by bacterial (and fungal) enzymes. All of the types of polysaccharides, abundantly present in fruits and vegetables, that can be digested by gut bacteria are called soluble fiber. (Undigestible fiber, such as grain fiber, is of no benefit.) Soluble fiber is the main source of food for gut bacteria and is also converted into the short chain fatty acids, e.g. acetic acid, that are the major nutrients for the human cells that line the colon. Thus, soluble fiber, such as the inulin in leeks or the pectin in apples, is essential for healthy poop and intestines.

Dr. Oz advises eating dairy and fermented foods with their live bacteria to supplement gut flora and to compensate for antibiotic treatments. This suggests that providing just a few different species of fermenting bacteria, probiotics, can produce a healthy community of gut bacteria. Unfortunately, each human gut requires hundreds of different species of bacteria that are not present in common dairy products, such as yogurt. The hundreds of different types of bacteria needed for a healthy gut are normally acquired from other people and animals, and from uncooked, raw vegetables. Cooking and excessive sanitation eliminates the exchange and acquisition of healthy bacteria. Exposure to antibiotics can lead to a lasting deficiency of gut bacteria that is unrecognized by modern medicine.

Dr. Oz recommends that people who have trouble eating certain foods or have good intolerances, should avoid the problem foods. This suggests that the problem is somehow in the intolerant person, even though there are no genes for food intolerance and very few cases of food intolerance result from an immune reaction. Food intolerance is actually the inability of an individual's incomplete gut flora to digest certain types of food. Antibiotics, for example, can kill off species of bacteria that are needed to completely digest certain types of soluble fiber or other plant products, phytochemicals, so instead of producing the needed short chain fatty acids, other irritating molecules are produced and the digestive system is upset. Simple intolerances, such as lactose intolerance, can be remedied by just eating small amounts of yogurt containing fermenting bacteria, probiotics, that have the genes for enzymes that can digest lactose. In a couple of weeks, most people are permanently able to tolerate lactose. More complex intolerances may require more persistent pursuit of the missing bacterial species by eating many different types of raw vegetables with clinging soil bacteria. The medical community has failed to acknowledge the need to repair gut flora compromised by antibiotics and to provide simple guidelines for reacquiring missing gut bacteria.

Dr. Oz provides a great service by promoting some healthy ideas, but it would be even better if he helped the public to understand how the gut and gut flora produce healthy poop.

Food Poisoning and Manmade E. coli

Bacteria on food is a problem for diet-compromised people.   

Gut Flora are Required for a Healthy Immune System

Healthy people don't get sick from food poisoning, because their gut flora provide protection.  Gut bacteria control the development of the human immune system by producing interesting compounds, including short chain fatty acids and vitamins.  In response to the gut bacteria, the healthy immune system produces white blood cells that can effectively attack bacteria, and also control this aggressive behavior to spare human cells and avoid unnecessary attacks on beneficial bacteria.

Disrupted Gut Flora Lead to Susceptibility to Disease/Infection

Gut flora can be compromised by what we eat and antibiotics.  Those normally affected by food poisoning are the very young (on formula), the old (constipated) and those treated with antibiotics.  Each of these groups have abnormal gut flora.  Food poisoning is rarely observed in exclusively breastfed babies being introduced to foods, because human milk contains potent antimicrobial polysaccharides (human milk oligosaccharides) that only permit the growth of a few species of Bifidobacteria.  Formula (in any amount) disrupts the normal development of the gut and immune system by stimulating an inflammatory growth of adult gut bacteria, making these babies more susceptible to intestinal and respiratory diseases, including food poisoning.

Constipation, which is more common in older people, reflects a disruption of the gut flora and decreases the effectiveness of the immune system in these individuals.  In most cases the compromised gut flora results from a long history of a restricted diet and  reduced access to environmental sources of bacteria.

Antibiotics are usually ignored as major corruptors of the immune system, even though they are known to produce diarrhea and constipation.  Doctors reluctantly suggest that people taking antibiotics should just eat some yogurt.  This is a silly oversight that severely compromises future health, because probiotics supply only a tiny fraction of the 150 different species of bacteria needed for a healthy body and immune system.

Pathogenic E. coli is Made by Antibiotic Use in Cattle

E. coli is a common and essential resident of the human gut and the best studied bacterium.  This bacterium is not normally resistant to antibiotics nor does it produce deadly toxins.  Antibiotic resistance and toxin production results from treating cattle with antibiotics to increase fat production prior to butchering.

Antibiotics Select for E. coli that Stick to Rectal Surface of Cattle

Pathogenic E. coli are not found throughout cattle fecal material, but rather they are only in the outermost surface layer.  This outer layer of material contains bacteria from the surface of the rectum just as the cow pies are deposited.  E. coli does not normally stick to this surface, because it lacks a protein, such as a hemagglutinin capable of binding to the surface polysaccharides, heparan sulfate.  Antibiotics kill off the bacteria normally residing on the surface.  As a member of the intestinal biofilm community, E. coli continually exchanges DNA/genes with other bacteria in the gut and picks up three useful genes, to become a pathogen:

1. Antibiotic resistance
2. Hemagglutinin for sticking to surfaces
3. Toxin to release nutrients from the intestinal walls.

E. coli with these three genes can colonize the rectal tissue of cattle in feed lots.

Pathogenic E. coli Can be Easily Avoided

We have to work hard as a society to have problems with E. coli.  Pathogenic E. coli results from absurd use of huge quantities of antibiotics just to disrupt the normal gut flora of cattle so that they become unhealthy and store fat in their tissues, i.e. prime beef.  The same effect can also be achieved just by feeding the cattle some short chain fatty acids, or better still avoiding this step by feeding exclusively on grass.  It would also be easy to treat the few cattle that have pathogenic E. coli, so that it doesn't become a problem.  Proper treatment of manure and meat processing would also block transmission of pathogenic E. coli to agricultural crops or meat.  Finally, an Anti-inflammatory Diet and Lifestyle would provide a healthy gut flora and immune system that would make people less susceptible to the pathogen.

Udder Nonsense

Recent articles in the popular press have heralded the genetic engineering of cows with some human milk proteins.  Milk produced by these transgenic cows is advertised as being similar or the same as human  breast milk.

This is like claiming that the udder in the picture is an all natural, low BPA container for fortified water.  

The breakthrough in humanized cow's milk, announced by Chinese researchers in PLoS One, actually documents replacement of cow lysozyme with the corresponding human enzyme.  That does not make the milk human anymore than adding egg white lysozyme would turn the cows into chickens. If it moos like a cow...

Cow's milk-based formula harms infants, because the carbohydrates it contains do not support the normal development of infant gut flora.  The result is gut inflammation, and not normal gut and immune system development.  Even human proteins produced in cows will have characteristic cow sugars attached.  It is these cow sugars on milk proteins that are associated with colic. The chains of sugars (milk oligosaccharides) free and/or associated with milk proteins are different in cows and humans, and cow carbs are a problem in formula.

I think that it is silly to support humanizing cow's milk formula, when the sensible solution is to support breast feeding and licensed human milk banks.  The natural approach is much cheaper and far healthier.  Only human milk and human milk-derived fortifiers should be used for infants (especially preterm) in hospitals.  It is time for the healthcare industry to realize that disruption of gut flora by antibiotics or artificial formula is a health risk.  The data are clear -- cow's milk (including transgenic cow’s milk) in the hospital may be profitable, but it is unhealthy, e. g. contributes to Clostridium difficile and necrotizing enterocolitis infections, and contributes to long term health problems, such as inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

References:

China Genetically Modifying Cows To Produce Human Breast Milk

Characterization of Bioactive Recombinant Human Lysozyme Expressed in Milk of Cloned Transgenic Cattle

Contagious Health

Healthy gut flora: bacteria from family, friends, Fido and food provide the foundation for the complex microbial community of the intestines, which controls the immune system.  Antibiotics and hygiene are detrimental to gut flora and health.

Gut Flora Are Complex

Recent studies of the gut flora, e.g. the human gut biome, show that each individual maintains more than 150 different species of bacteria.  Worldwide, that means that about a thousand different bacterial species are common residents of the human gut and together those gut bacteria use more than 1 million different genes.  Many of those genes code for the enzymes used by gut bacteria to digest plant polysaccharides, i.e. soluble fiber.

Hygiene Isolates People from Healthy Sources of Gut Flora

Every time we speak, we release a mist of bacteria from our lungs, mouth and GI tract.  These bacteria are on our skin, clothes and personal items, and provide a source of the bacteria that make us healthy.  Parents and older siblings pass these bacteria on to younger children.  These donated bacteria are essential for the development of a healthy immune system and children growing up with healthy relatives and exposed to soil bacteria via pets, farm animals, etc. are healthier than children who are more isolated.  

In this sense, hygiene is unhealthy, because an individual is isolated from new sources of bacteria that could replace those lost by limited diets, antibiotics, etc.  Otherwise, health is contagious, since gut bacteria from healthy individuals can spread among the population.  Washing hands and food is unnatural and unhealthy.

Few Bacteria Make You Sick, but Many Are Essential for Good Health

Food intolerance can result from “good” family hygiene, limited diets and exposure to antibiotics.  A common intolerance results from the absence of bacteria that produce an enzyme to digest dairy lactose, i.e. lactose intolerance.  Lactose intolerance can be readily cured by eating a dairy product, such as yogurt, that contains both lactose and live bacteria (probiotics) that can digest the lactose.  Simply eating moderate amounts of live yogurt daily for a couple of weeks resupplies the gut flora with bacteria that can digest lactose, and the intolerance is gone.

Soluble Fibers Are Plant Polysaccharides that Are Digestible by Bacterial Enzymes

Humans only produce enzymes to digest one polysaccharide, starch.  All of the other hundreds of polysaccharides present in plants are only digestible by bacterial (and fungal) enzymes of the gut flora.  If the bacteria and enzymes needed to fully digest a particular food polysaccharide are absent, then digestive problems ensue and the polysaccharide can act as a laxative.  Continual eating of the problem food with a new source of diverse bacteria, e.g. lightly rinsed vegetables right from the garden, then the gut flora will incorporate new bacteria that can digest the problem polysaccharide and the gut is happy.  

Soluble fiber feeds the gut bacteria that convert it into short chain fatty acids that nourish the colon. Constipation results from the absence of the bacteria needed to digest dietary fiber and to produce the large volume of bacteria that make up well hydrated stools. 

Gut Bacteria Are Needed for Healthy Immunity

Cells of the human immune system are stored predominantly in the lining of the intestines.  Intensive study of the interaction of the gut bacteria with the gut has revealed that both the aggressive half of the immune system that attacks pathogens and the suppressive half that protects the body itself from attack, develop in the gut in response to particular types of bacteria.  Thus, the absence of one type of bacteria can cripple responses to infection, while other bacteria are needed to block autoimmune diseases and allergies.  Most diseases are caused by disruption of the normal interactions between gut bacteria and the immune cells developing in the gut.

Antibiotics Lead to Autoimmunity

Antibiotics have dramatic and lasting impact on gut flora.  Cattle treated with antibiotics and a high carbohydrate diet have an altered metabolism (obesity) that leads to rapid fat accumulation in their tissues.  This is good for making tasty beef, but the same approach in people produces the suite of diseases in affluent societies.  

Children treated with an antibiotic for a simple ear infection, are much more likely to return to pediatricians for treatments of subsequent obesity, infections and diseases.  Compromised gut flora can take years to return to normal function after antibiotic treatment.  Loss of the appendix, which is the normal source of bacteria to replenish gut flora after diarrhea, results in an increased risk of abnormal gut flora and numerous autoimmune diseases.  It is likely that most autoimmune diseases are preceded by prior treatment with antibiotics that disrupted normal gut flora and permanently altered the immune system.

Interventions to Treat Disease:  the Anti-Inflammatory Diet and Fecal Transplants

It should be obvious that a disrupted or unhealthy gut flora will compromise the immune system and contribute to disease.  Treatment of diseases is complicated by the use of drugs that also impact the gut flora and produce additional side effects.  An alternative approach would be to support the healthy gut flora and normal development of the gut immune system.  As always, the answer is a supportive diet and a source of gut bacteria.  The diet is obviously the Anti-Inflammatory Diet that provides support for almost anything that ails you.  Probiotics are not retained in the gut, but they can contribute a few of the genes needed for a healthy gut flora. The source of bacteria for a  healthy gut flora may range from minimally washed garden vegetables, to the more aggressive total replacement of gut flora with a fecal transplant from a healthy donor.