I wish some of the questions on this forum could be passed on to microbiologists willing to reply.

Hi Chubster,

I am relieved to hear that intermittent fasting might be an alternative to fecal transfer! It seems infinitely preferable to me.
Today is Monday so I am on my fast day. Just celery soup and a plain yoghurt. I like vegetables so it is no trouble eating those on other days too. Keep up your fecal chronicle. It is interesting.

There is an amazing book published in 1910 about how fasting cures many ailments written by Upton Sinclair, and although he had no idea why fasting seemed to work so well, I would guess that the reason was because the gut microbiota changed during the fast. He only fasted longer than 3 days, because he said that it was a waste because 3 days were the time that hunger was present, but he said that if someone was too heavy, or too skinny, the fasting seemed to ultimately reset their body weight to their ideal body weight naturally after the fast, although the focus in the book was on a lot of other benefit to fasting. The book is free now, and easy to find it as a pdf on google because it is out of copywrite. It’s called the fasting cure.

If I had to guess though, I’d guess that fasting had some sort of profound effect on the gut microbiota. And probably intermittent fasting would have the same effect, especially if a person was eating standard American diet. (SAD)

Hi Lemna,
yes, that was a very interesting article about that guy going to Africa. I’d do the same thing if I had the money and time for that. I think that he’s doing the right thing.

Recent episode of “Trust Me I’m a Doctor” looked at pro-biotics, sort of. They discussed the merits of them but opted to do a trial of eating oatmeal every day for 6 weeks (porridge, muesli, etc, as long as the eater got 3 tablespoons of oats). DNA of gut bacteria analysed at start & finish. At end of trial the DNA of bacteria known to be beneficial to heart health & protect the linings of the intestines had the strongest signatures – they were present at start of trial but very weak.
Good news for me as I have been eating oatmeal (rolled oats so unprocessed) for years as a method to reduce cholesterol levels (3 tablespoons rolled oats so unprocessed). I only add a bit of fruit & flax seeds so low in calories (under 200 calories according to the app I use). Occasionally add roasted rolled oats to Greek yogurt as a snack on days I don’t have porridge.

Eat fermented foods. Fermented soya milk. Eat raw veggies, don’t peel them (Id even wash the veggies sparingly). Eat whole fruit with the skin on. Natural Greek yogurt. Avoid sugar. Eat lots of soluble fibre, beans, apples. Green unripened bananas.

So far I have not seen fermented soya milk. However, we have a strong Polish community in this area and the local supermarket has started to stock Kefir at a very reasonable price. I have just tried my first glass (about 1230pm, I don’t do breakfast). My reading on the subject suggests that this is a very healthy thing to drink and I also found it very much to my liking. The next step is to start making my own.

Fasting just increases akkermansia bacteria that feeds from the mucus in your gut and protects it. There are only benefits from fasting unless you are in poor health

Also very good is “The Diet Myth” by Tim Spector.

CalifDreamer – I have just finished a home-made leek and bacon quiche with shop bought sauerkraut and pickled veg. I’m hoping some of those bugs survived! At least the evening kefir will be my own.

CalifDreamer. I didn’t cook either the sauerkraut or the pickled veg – ate them as a cold side. I’m getting to like them. When they are gone I will make my own – the garden is full of veg I need to do something with.

The creamy kefir worked well – thicker and a good taste. I had intended to revert to either straight full milk or goats milk, but I had a tub of single cream going spare, so the batch currently fermenting is half cream and half full milk. Looking good. The kefir grains are now getting very plentiful – not overrun yet but getting there, they really seem to like cream.

My weight is plateauing at my initial target but I ‘ll have a fast day tomorrow. For me FDs are usually zero cal and black coffee/green tea so the cals are not a problem if I allow myself what has become my mid-evevning habit of a glass of kefir.

LJoyce, you know the confusing part of that is that the original full fat milk is still there, even if fermented. So where do the original calories go? You didn’t remove anything. (If, in fact you fermented it yourself) So do you go by the milk calories or the kefir calories? I suppose this is all kind of a moot point since calorie listings are at best an educated estimate on most food products. I guess I would go by the original milk calories unless I learn of a reason not to.

Penguin, if you like sauerkraut, you must try fermenting some yourself! No staters needed, just cabbage, non-iodized salt and a jar or other vessel to ferment it in. It’s SO much better than the stuff from a can.

LJoyce, that sounds completely reasonable. I wasn’t thinking of the gases expelled while the milk is fermenting, but that does happen. And the new grains that are produced are removed from the finished kefir. It’s definitely a different product than what you started with. I bet baking bread changes the calorie content of bread dough. If nothing else, the evaporation of liquids when baking would make a difference.

Hi folks,

I’ve been on 5:2 for at least 2 years. I’m losing slowly because I have trouble maintaining my discipline. Nevertheless, I’m sure 5:2 and maintaining a healthy gut biome are the way for me to go for the remaining 30-40 pounds I need to lose.

I take a probiotic but I’ve recently become aware of the concept of PREbiotics. I’m not up to reading a technical paper and the information I’ve gotten comes — anyone surprised? — from people selling expensive supplements. Naturally I’d take what those guys have to say with a *large* grain of salt. Still, what they did say about *supporting* the healthy flora in the gut and enabling it to suppress the problematic ones that cause cravings is something I’ve seen from practical experience in my life and something I’d really like to do.

For my whole long life when I’ve been able to maintain any degree of discipline and lose weight it has been, ironically, EFFORTLESS. I can only attribute that to the times when I’ve got a healthy population in my gut supporting my efforts. So I am rabid for all the reliable information anyone here can share with me.

So far I’ve read off-the-deep-end things like avoiding tomatoes and all it’s relatives in the nightshade family and beans. And I’ve read that I should add difficult things like raw onions and garlic and dandelion greens to my regular diet. Anything you know that’s more reliable, complete and do-able will be MUCH appreciated.

Thank you, bigbooty. I know that’s good advice and it’s what I try to incorporate within 5:2. And I can assure you I would NEVER take health advice from someone who’s trying to sell a product.

But my situation requires a little more specificity. There are times when I am devoid of cravings. At those times I can follow a regime of eating healthy foods and fasting (complete water fasting) without any interference or resistance from my body. During those periods I’ve lost 50 pounds and mostly kept them off.

When I’m in one of those grace periods I can go out to dinner and have a glass of wine and even a bite of dessert and then push it away without regret and continue to rely on my discipline and resume appropriate eating. Other times I have one tiny bite of something and I’m a gone-er for months at a time despite resolve and eating the “right” foods and following my program white knuckles and all. Still, I’ll have those insane cravings and begin to cheat and before I know it I’m back to indulgent eating for *months* at a time.

I attribute those miraculous intervals to a healthy, well-balanced biome. During those times I eat a tremendous amount of cooked beans. They’re one of my staples. And I am not ever going to willingly give up tomatoes. I grow my own so that I can enjoy that fabulous flavor! But the thing I’ve found is I can do anything reasonable happily and without effort and I want to understand why and what are the conditions I have to achieve to stay there.

What I’m trying to fine tune is the *real*, sensible every day, and understandable science about what foods and nutrients keep me in that zone. I’m thoroughly convinced that there is some chemistry to this. And if I can understand it, I can protect myself with it.

If the initial question of this thread was “does Fasting change your gut biome?”, then the answer is going to be yes.

Any time you change what you put into your mouth, you will change your gut flora. If previously you had eaten the Standard American Diet, or ate lots of processed carbs and sugar, then eating the higher quality carbs from veggies/fruit and the protein of a good Fast Day will be a surprise to your flora. This is why some fasters develop diarrhea or constipation.

Any well-balanced diet will make the gut flora more diverse, which is the better situation. Fasting, especially not eating on a Fast Day as some do, will not change the gut biome at all. It is the combination of many diverse foods that makes the biggest impact.

Probiotic pills or supplements don’t do much. Green smoothies do more. Not salad eating; not juicing: but ground-up greens and veggies. The macerating of the greens makes them easier for the gut flora to digest them, which boosts their population.

Actually, bigbooty, although usually I agree with you 100%, a recent study showed that the biome can change in days, rather than months. A gut flora researcher stayed with the hunter-gatherers of the Kalihari for a couple of weeks and ate what they ate. He throughly mapped his gut biome first, then took more samples for mapping during and after his stay. The diversity of his biome shot up quickly then came back down after he went back to his former way of eating. Awfully interesting.

I have to agree that fasting has a large impact on the gut bacteria, likely just as much as diversifying one’s diet. I’m definitely aware that my guts reactions to food vary a lot from when I’m breaking a fast to a few days later.

The largest thing I notice is my tolerance of fruit is very high after fasting. When I wasn’t fasting in China I saw my desire and consumption of fruit dropping. I still ate a good amount but I totally avoided dried fruits wasn’t as attracted to other fruits. Instead I found myself craving onions, olives and cucumbers. I came back, fasted for about 24 hours and bam I’m back to hitting the fruit hard. Basically I think I might lose some capacity to digest the fruit when I’m not fasting.

I’ve also done multi-day fast with 7 days being my longest. Those seem to have a far greater impact than just a 36 hour fast. I think the reactions in the gut are the hardest to adjust too on the longer fasts. I don’t think the outcome is negative, but there is certainly a lot of activity in the gut even during longer fasts.

Tolerance as in how my gut responds to fruit and other types of food. I’m pretty sure a lot of sugar from fruit doesn’t hit my blood, at least very quickly. Blood glucose is very easy to measure. (Just sometimes slightly painful.) Absorption rates likely has a lot to do with gut bacteria. However absorption of fructose is actually complex.

Part of the problem with refined sugar is it generally seems to break apart into glucose and fructose quickly and absorbed from the small intestine quickly. This is probably because the ratio of fructose to glucose is about 1 to 1 and a total lack of any other nutrition. The rapid absorption of refined sugar into the blood stream has been shown in some nutritional studies. That is where the glycogen depletion is probably really important, so there is somewhere to put the sugar. However you don’t have to eat sugar to replace lost glycogen.

There are differences between sugar in fruit and refined sugars:
* Fruit contains more types of simple sugars
* The ratio of fructose to glucose is often very different in fruit than refined sugars which may be a factor in fructose absorption.
* Fruit has fiber and fiber tends to carry things deeper into the gut where there are higher populations of bacteria.
* Fruit comes packed with many different nutrients, some of which seem to interfere with the absorption of sugar into the blood stream.

I think that one’s diet can have a strong impact on how sugar from fruit is absorbed. If you eat a lot of processed foods then maybe sugar from fruit gets absorbed with ease. I’m not sure about it though.

I’m leaning more and more towards a healthy gut being very protective. Brad Pilon in his “Good Belly Bad Belly” book even pushes the idea that fruit juices can even be protective when eating a heavy greasy meal. There are studies that show greatly reduced endotoxins in the blood if a greasy meal is consumed with fruit juice. However fruit juice does have much higher levels of sugars than whole fruit.

Personally I can tell you that after fasting I don’t get a sugar rush from fruit, however there is far more gas produced. That is an indication of bacterial action. I’m at a point where I would rather have the gas issues than the high blood glucose issues.

Joining three dots. IF seems to be effective when the chemistry in the gut promotes the activity of specific bacteria that alter our response to sugar. I came across this today that might be a part of that mechanism https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181029084038.htm