Your Gut May be Dangerous for your Brain

August 14, 2022

Your Gut May be Dangerous for Your Brain


This is a major public health discovery. Researchers at LSU have just published the finding that the bacteria family Bacteroides fragilis make a lipopolysaccharide called BF-LPS, the most potent neurotoxin found to date. That's it. The bacteria that is present in your gut at all times, make a poison that gets out of your gut, into your blood, and proceeds to enter your brain and damage it.


"LPSs, in general, are probably the most potent microbial-derived pro-inflammatory neurotoxic glycolipids known," says Dr. Lukiw. "Many laboratories, including our own, have detected different forms of LPS within neurons of the Alzheimer's disease-affected human brain." as quoted to ScienceDaily.


The pathway of effect is fairly straightforward. The BF-LPS leaks out of the GI tract enters the bloodstream and is able to penetrate the blood-brain barrier after which it enters brain cells. Inside the brain, it increases inflammation and inhibits a very specific cell-integrity protein called neuron-specific neurofilament light (NF-L,). Deficiency of this protein leads to progressive nerve cell atrophy, and then cell death, as is observed in Alzheimer's-affected neurons. In fact, you can measure elevated spinal fluid NF-L proteins up to 22 years before developing Alzheimer's. Spooky!


What's the solution? Go to the source. Change your gut by changing your diet. This is where saturated fat becomes a recognizable problem. Eating more bacon and corn-fed steak is dramatically increasing your saturated fat. That leads to higher levels of colonic Bacteroides. That leads to higher LPs in your blood. That leads to lower levels of NF-L. Increasing your Bifidobacter families of colonic bacteria do the opposite. And you get that by eating more fiber. Hence, more fruit and vegetables, more flax seed, and whole grains. How does this square with lectins? With Plasmalogens? Time will tell.


The LSU team also reported that adequate dietary fiber intake can head off the process. We Americans average somewhere in the 10-15 grams a day of fiber. If you can get your fiber up to 25 or better, 30 grams a day, you get a huge increase in Bifidobacter and a dramatic downregulation of Bacteroides. And if you take lactulose as a supplement, you get the same effect. Can you eat all the bacon you want and just take lactulose to make up for your sins? Not sure. Not studied. But better, get yourself sufficient fiber with lots of vegetables and flax seed, or even Metamucil and other forms of bulk fiber, and then take 5 grams of Lactulose a day. Lactulose comes with the added benefit of increased calcium and magnesium absorption.


www.What will Work for me. Well, now I understand why we need to be cautious with the so-called "Keto" diet that is based on meat. Corn and bean-fed animals get fat, just like we do when they eat too many concentrated carbohydrates. The fat they store is saturated fat that causes inflammation in us when we eat it. And now we know at least one dramatically damaging pathway by which that inflammation wreaks its havoc. I'm pretty good at keeping my keto diet intact by not eating till lunchtime, five days a week. That puts me into ketosis for at least 6 hours those 5 days. And if I stay away from sugar and white flour, I can keep my glucose below 100, most of the time. When I eat spinach and broccoli, asparagus, and salad, my glucose stays put. But fruit....not so good. So, I'm aiming to get my fiber from vegetables. Piles of them. And lactulose it is.


References: Science Daily, Frontiers in Neuroscience, Frontiers in Neurology, Microbiologyopen, Frontiers of Neuroscience


Pop Quiz


1. When you eat saturated fat (bacon, steak, butter, cheese - all from corn and bean-fed animals ) you encourage what group of bacteria in your colon?                                                    Answer: Bacteroides


2. What membrane lipid do those little Bacteroides make that gets into your blood?                    Answer: LPS's - lipopolysaccharide. Steven Gundry calls them "Little Pieces of S..."


3. What's so bad about BF-LPS, the lipopolysaccharide from Bacteroides?                          Answer: It is an intensely neurotoxic compound. Kills nerve cells.


4. What's so bad about nerve toxin in your gut?                                  Answer: It has no problem getting into your blood and then soaking right into your brain.  There it causes awful damage.

5. You can alter this process by doing what?                                      Answer: Cut down on saturated fat, switch to grass-raised animals, and increase your fiber in your diet by lots more vegetables. Then you increase the Bifidobacteria in your gut. Ask for triple broccoli at the restaurant. Not double, triple. Skip the potatoes. Consider taking lactulose as a supplement to increase that even further.


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