gut microbias

Day three at the pain conference in  Yokohama. 

When I asked other  delegates at the international IASP conference on pain (in Yokohama)  asking who was their favourite speaker, the winner  was unanimous : that Irish bloke speaking about the gut. He was Professor John Cryan from the University College in Cork.   

Not only did he have a great Irish accent, he was funny. Listening to a talk about poo was such a relief (so to speak) after days of intensive neuroscience  and information on  drug pathways.  Here was something  interesting, thought provoking and challenging.  

Microbes that live happily in us are the latest, right on,  hippest thing at the moment. Everyone, including pain physicians,  love thinking about their guts: what goes in, how long it stays there and what goes out. But there is much much more to our feeding and scatological interests. Professor Cryan had all 4500 delegates finally looking up from their i-pads and  paying attention.This is not my area so I am only  reporting on it.

He told us that our genes are  99% microbial  and only 1% human DNA.  The   crowd loved it  when he said that each time we go the  toilet we poop out some  microbes so this act makes us, momentarily, just a little more human.

Some value adding from me here:  The idea we are made up of bugs is not new . I studied   the work of Lynn Margulis  (1938 –  2011) back in a History and Philosophy of Science degree (um over 20 years ago now). Professor Margulis  first  explained that we evolved to live in a symbiotic relationship with bacteria who stay on in our cells as mitochondria (the battery that fires up each cell). That is : humans did not evolve and THEN take in bugs to help us: we evolved together for mutual benefit  Like  coral’s two species,one could not live without the other.  I looked up a quote from  her  last night as I settled into Tokyo.   

Life on earth is such a good story you cannot afford to miss the beginning... Beneath our superficial differences we are all of us walking communities of bacteria. The world shimmers, a pointillist landscape made of tiny living beings.  

Profesor Margulis was perhaps ahead of her  time.

The DNA of microbia is  part of our fundamental building blocks there for the duration. However some of these bugs that hang around in our guts wash in and out. After a half century of trying to purge these poor guys out of us and get rid of ‘germs’ we are beginning to realise how important to our well being they  are.

Now here is the thing  that has us all intrigued. Professor Cryan put up a slide that,  from the back row of a 4.500 seat auditorium looked pretty convincing (although who can say for sure on the basis of a slide? And I didn’t capture the name of the research involved) that antibiotics taken early in life increase the chances that human adults will experience abdominal pain.  

But what was really remarkable (and controversial)  about his presentation was research that showed, apparently, that wiping out gut bugs with antibiotics makes mice less sociable.  Its hard to say with mice if they felt unsociable or if it was because no one liked them but there you have it: antibiotics might be also making humans  less sociable.  The mice and human also developed higher levels of stress and generalised inflammatory responses following antibiotics. These effects are, apparently,   reversible.

We  all  are aware that we shouldn’t  be taking  antibiotics for upper respiratory, ear, nose and throat bugs or gastro bugs   unless there is a proven need through a swab test.  I now particularly  appreciate my   G.P for her   advice to refrain from giving antibiotics to my   children. 

 I had previously  watched a great Catalyst  (Australian science show) on this subject.  The show  suggested  strong links (not yet proven) between  gut health and asthma.  

Its   the way these symptoms can be reversed that creates excitement . In a nutshell: practitioners   find the poo of someone who is, basically, happy and healthy, and plant it in someone (or a mouse to test the theory) with asthma /depression/gut pain.

How? Well its called fecal implants, and they can up or they can go down. Professor Cryan suggested the  terms  'crapsules ' and 'repoopulation' .    According to Catalyst  the early results of studies on poo transfers  for asthma and diet changes  for other disorders  are exciting.  Catalyst also made the point that a varied, low possessed diet seems to help feed those little guys in us.

Later on at the poster session, I talked to a  researcher named Stacy Totsch, a psychology doctoral student from the University of Alabama in Birmingham USA.  Stacy is  part of a team who are investigating the effects of a bad  American diet (known as the   Suboptimal American diet, or SAD for short).   They found that a SAD  overload of  fatty/sweet stuff made rats   fat, slower and less inclined to run as much as usual within a short time frame. She also found that the diet activated their immune system. That is:  they developed short term inflammation although not pain  (although I presumed  that would come later given the links already  shown between childhood obesity and pain). Interestingly, the boy rats showed different response to the girl rats.  I wondered is it the diet per se or the lack of variation of good and especially green stuff that bugs NEED that is the problem?  She told me they didn’t know the answer  to this one yet but they were working on it.  

We all  know we should eat a  varied diet and not restrict or avoid  foods unless there is a   medical case to do so. But   just knowing that eating  diverse unprocessed  foods  which includes lots of vegies and fruit  (or seaweed in Japan) makes us  happy and healthy doesn’t make us change our behaviours does it?

I’ll just add in a PS. In  my Tokyo newspaper, Japan Today, (October 2,2016) it was reported that for only the fourth time in its 70 year history, the United Nations will  hold  a special meeting this Wednesday devoted to a global health issue: The  rise of untreatable infections due to the over use  of antibiotics.   A 2014 British report   projected that, by 2050, bacteria resistance will kill more people than cancer and (this is always a good one to get the world  going) it will cost the world $100 trillion in lost economic output. I hope they can solve the problem of  the  over use antibiotics that are not only   ineffective for upper respiratory infections and render life challenging infections impossibel to effectively treat, but MAY contribute to asthma and gut pain in humans and cause  social isolation in mice.

References: 

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/l/lynn_margulis.html

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/4067184.htm