Seth’s blog

In The New Yorker (25 January 2010), David Owen wrote about his father’s mother:

Gaga lived to be ninety-two, despite never having had much conventional health care. . . . She made foul-smelling yogurt . . .

• papers about the efficacy of Vitamin C in treating a wide range of illnesses
• the so-called Medical Revolution — stem cells, etc. Good description of how the hype — this or that “revolution” — has been misleading time after time.
• how to make proscuitto. Proscuitto is high in umami. The umami flavor gets stronger over time as the protein breaks down.

In a long comment on an earlier post, JohnG tells how he failed and succeeded to get rid of disabling exercise-induced asthma. Lots of things didn’t work:

I tried Vitamin D; it didn’t work, but it did help my nasal allergies somewhat. I tried low carb dieting, and just like Dr. Lutz of “Life Without Bread” said, it made asthma worse while it practically cured my nasal allergies. I also tried the Dr. Sears approach of taking as much as 7.5g of EPA/DHA a day; no change at all in the exercise induced asthma.

The idea that asthma is due to lack of microbes made sense to him and he started trying fermented foods and probiotics. At first, nothing:

I re-reviewed the probiotic slant and found the Helminth story and all the trials that were going on in PubMed for them. With that logic in hand, I set about to find a probiotic that worked. I tried yogurt, kefir, fermented cabbage, and buttermilk to no avail. I then tried store bought probiotics one by one. I tried The Maker’s Diet probiotic and it didn’t help; but I do think it helped make a 20 year long wart go away. I also tried all forms of probiotics on the market; even LGG. Nothing.

Finally, success:

I bought this super high dose probiotic and took it along with a L. Sporogenes/bacillus coagulans. Voila, three days later I could really feel the difference during exercise. I continued that for 10 days. By the 10th day, I didn’t have to hit my inhaler at all during exercise. Wow!

First, I had to decide which probiotic did the trick. I didn’t want to spend a ton on that high dose probiotic, so I stuck with the Bacillus Coagulans and it continued working normally. So, I found my probiotic. Now, I needed to verify it wasn’t placebo. A close cousin to exercise induced asthma is the phenomenon of waking up sneezing and then promptly getting an asthma attack/or closure after that.

I went off my bacillus coagulans that I had been on for 14 days. By the second day, I noticed a little difference. By the third day, I had to hit my inhaler during the workout. By the 10th day (bacillus coagulans supposedly lives in your intestines 7 days), I was full-blown back to having to use 4 inhaler puffs and it wasn’t doing the trick. This was test phase one.

I then went back on the bacillus coagulans for 10 days. The same process repeated itself. The nightly asthma attacks abated after about 4 days and the same no-puff needed during exercise continued as well.

I then went back off the bacillus coagulans for 10 days. I got the asthma back at day 3.

I’ve now been back on 5 billion CFU’s of bacillus coagulans (duraflora) for 18 days. I don’t have to use my inhaler for exercise. I can feel the asthma come on very slightly and then go away.

Very impressive. Shows what can happen if (a) you think for yourself, (b) persist, and (c) have access to a lot of helpful information. I think he needed all three.

We evolved to like sour foods, foods with complex flavors, and umami foods, I believe, so that we would eat more bacteria-laden food. Why do we need to eat such food? Perhaps to get enough Vitamin K2. Vitamin K1 and Vitamin K2 are quite different. A brief introduction:

The term vitamin K refers to a group of compounds that have a 2-methyl-1,4-naphtoquinone ring in common but differ in the length and structure of their isoprenoid side chain at the 3-position. The 2 forms of vitamin K that occur naturally in foods are phylloquinone (vitamin K₁) and the group of menaquinones (vitamin K₂, MK-n), which vary in the number of prenyl units. Whereas phylloquinone is abundant in green leafy vegetables and some vegetable oils, menaquinones are synthesized by bacteria; therefore, they mainly occur in fermented products such as cheese.

A 2004 study found a huge protective effect of K2:

The scientists at Osaka City University gave 21 women with viral liver cirrhosis [which greatly increases your chances of liver cancer] a daily supplement of 45mg vitamin K2 (menaquinone) for a period of two years. A group of 19 women with the disease received a placebo for the same time. Liver cancer was detected in only two of the 21 women given vitamin K2 but nine of the 19 women in the control group, reports the team in today’s issue of JAMA (292:358-361). After adjustment for age, severity of disease and treatment, the researchers found the women receiving vitamin K supplementation were nearly 90 per cent less likely to develop liver cancer.

A huge effect, suggesting that K2 is necessary for a repair system to work properly. This recent article is more support for the idea that K2 protects against cancer. The effect is weaker, perhaps because there was less damage needing repair.

• Should you use a night guard (which covers your teeth) and if so which type?
• For whom do university websites exist?
• Why is 20% of mother’s milk indigestible?
• The growth of Steve Martin’s “oblique” comedy

Thanks to Paul Sas, Ryan Holiday, and Casey Manion.