SUMMARY: Our upcoming CE presentation at the 2019 Virginia Council of Nurse Practitioner (VCNP) Annual Conference, March 7th, dives deep into BRAIN, COGNITION, DIET, CE, ALZHEIMER’S! We are going to share what the evidence finds forWHAT TO EAT, and WHAT NOT TO EAT, for BRAIN HEALTH! Our presentation is called “Add 7.5 yrs to Brainspan with MIND diet and SAGE Cognition Assessment Tool”. What you need to know –> A LOT of research is looking at specific diets and brain health. At this time, the MIND diet rises to the top for reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive impairment both with strict and moderate follow. It is this latter finding that makes theMIND diet BETTER than the Mediterranean and DASH diet for brain health because those had NO significant impact on AD risk reduction for moderate follow! ♥–> Diet has incredible systemic reach, including all the way to crossing the blood brain barrier! BAM–>Diet is perhaps the biggest determinant of the microbiome constituents. The major focus of recent research is on the microbiome and its by-products (called metabolites) because those can be changed up by diet and lifestyle. Thus diet can alter the microbiome towards health (anti-inflammatory) or towards being more disease-prone (inflammatory). \o/ If you are a Licensed Nurse Practitioner (in any state), or student enrolled in a NP program, plan to attend this Brain, Cognition, Diet CE! Those unable to attend, or not nurse practitioners, message us for information on how you too can see this presentation! \o/ The bottom line is that everyone needs to hear this information because recent studies find that eating a Western-style diet literally SHRINKS the brain, even in middle age. The results accounted for the effects of all other lifestyle factors, indicating that, when people are in their 40s and 50s,diet exerts a stronger influence on Alzheimer’s disease than exercise or intellectual activity do. “Alzheimer’s doesn’t just turn on when you reach a certain age,”explains Lisa Mosconi, PhD, associate director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian.“Instead, it’s a very long process that starts with changes in the brain when people are in their 40s and 50s. So we have a good 20 years to do something about it. The question is, what can we do in terms of prevention?” This Brain, Cognition, Diet, CE Alzheimer’s information is key to mitigating those risks! ♥
SUMMARY: CME MICROBIOME Questions is where the rubber meets the road! I learn what you really take away from the evidence packed Introduction to Microbiome presentation!!! Not only was it a GREAT turnout for the CME MICROBIOME, DISEASE, THERAPEUTICS, NUTRITIONheld OCT 25, 2017 in Pittsburgh, at Passavant Hospital(see this post for details),but the questions asked by these medical providers were spot on! Read below for some of the Q&A with focus on:What to do if on the “Avoid Diet”, theMIND Diet and Dementia Prevention,fermented foods, and the ketogenic diet — MACS, fruit and weight! The Therapeutic Manipulation of Microbiome slide (see below) shows how microbiome nourishingly sick the Standard America Diet is. Some call this diet void of MACs, or microbiota-accessible carbohydrates, leaving the microbiome to nosh on our carb-rich mucus gut lining, when dietary pickings get slim. [Desai et al 2016] This CME crowd took their first ever pass into the anaerobic world of this newly discovered organ and saw its systemic body-wide devastating health impact when the gut lining becomes compromised (see the below slide) ⇒ The next step is to learn our bolt on presentations of evidence based therapeutic diet ⇔ lifestyle changes that can move this organ to health.♥ You want great timely, current, incredible microbiome and nutrition CME programsbecause microbiome information is what your medical professionals NEED to stay cutting edge current in understanding how to help patients keep (or move) off diseasespan!Click here to contact us
Businesses (especially self insured) looking to reduce healthcare costs, can contact us too because microbiome information is what your employees NEED to hear to keep (or move) them off diseasespan. Individuals and other groups wanting to hear this information can also CONTACT us to make that happen! See here for our SERVICES!
CME MICROBIOME Questions & Answers
I’m on the ‘Avoid’ Diet. “What do you recommend I do to get off that diet?“
First, the ‘Avoid Diet’ is on my ending slide, shown below! Generally, it is associated with the most restrictive elimination diet, Wahl’s Protocol, having research including clinical trial for neurological based MS as well as grants written for study for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and ALS. I explained that ALL of the healing diets meld together in that they are =&0=&. David Katz, MD noted the same, Oct 2017, in “Awakening From Alzheimer’s”, Episode 11. Further, he explained that what we can ALL agree on resolves over 80 percent of the health concerns as shown by theNorth Karelia Project (Finland). Consider the ‘Avoid Diet’ tenets as food for thought when health isn’t restored. I totally ♥ this question because it shows that my presentation motivated this doc to rethink diet and instilled desire to act to get off the path leading to diseasespan! Patient microbiome awareness education nudges nearer, and that is so necessary!
“Don’t ever underestimate the public — the key issue is lack of knowledge about microbes, not lack of intelligence,”
—Ed Yong keynote, October’s 2017 MoBE.
My suggestions were:
Quitting things cold turkey can be hard. I don’t recommend it!
Try eliminating the bad by crowding it out with better alternatives!
You cannot make the transition over night.
The tools I provide really help! The Interactive Fiber Spreadsheet teaches what YOUR fiber loads are and especially those supporting your beasties. The EASY 10 Day Journal Spreadsheet teaches you what YOUR proportion of meats, dairy… and most important, processed and prepared foods are. Those usually contain gut harming emulsifiers [see this post], sweeteners, and other additives as well as low quality antibiotic and hormone laced meat and dairy protein and pesticide laced vegetables and fruits. The worksheet listings of vegs and fruits (Wahl’s Protocol and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Phytonutrient PDF) helps you bump up your intake. Target 30 different vegs each week for microbiome diversity [see this post]. There are 21 meals in one week (3 each day). Think about eating a different vegetable or two at each meal!
You can’t stop everything you are doing if you aren’t prepared to replace it with healthier alternatives. You need some recipes.
I already armed you with a bank of recipes! Use my Pinterest Boards to learn what to eat and how to cook redic delic family and friend approved whole real microbiome friendly food. Focus on eliminating processed foods (having gut harming additives like emulsifiers) and increasing vegs!
Certain vegs contain microbiota-accessible carbohydrates, or MACs, which nourish the beasties towards anti-inflammatory, and provides them food so that they don’t nosh on our carb-rich mucus gut lining, when dietary pickings get slim. [Desai et al 2016] The post, Fiber Additives Starve Gut Gut Microbes, They Eat Mucus Lining helps to explain.
Contact me if recipes alone are not getting you where you want!
Healing Diet similarity
The top healing diets in each category share similar attributes including balance, higher vegetable and some fruit (especially low sugar like berries, avocados), wild caught fish/increased Omega-3s, fermented food, awareness of EWG toxin recommendations, along with self-awareness and monitoring of what you eat through journaling, and most important,finding a like-minded tribe of experienced healing diet eaters able to support your learning thereby establishingBlue Zones within families, to friends, to communities. =&1=& An emphasis on frequent, structured exercise and physical activity are also common themes.
With awareness of the many tenets of healing type diets and lifestyle impact on the microbiome,small diet and lifestyle changes result in big health improvement without the perceived rigidity of following a traditional diet plan, and these changes motivate you to your NEXT. – much is an excerpt from my post, What’s in a Practical Whole Foods PALEO, SCD, GAPS Healing Fridge?
Replicate the MODEL that WORKS for people successfully implementing diet change:
SUMMARY (updated Aug 2018):Dr. Rob Knight’s talk, Saturday, October 18, 2014, listed eleven factors that optimize the gut microbiome based on the American Gut Data cautioning all is preliminary. These are listed below along with an interesting article =&1=&Can We Eat Our Way To A Healthier Microbiome? It’s Complicated=&2=&” in which Dr. Knight and Jeff Leach (founders of crowd sourcing project“American Gut”) discuss the microbiome diet. A KEY finding was that themore vegs consumed (30 different each week is BEST), the more diverse the microbiome, and that is thought to be associated with health and improved immune status since MANY chronic diseases (see the below Table) have changes in microbiome diversity AND composition, [Cantinean et al 2018]. A 2018 update on the American Gut data just published, [McDonald et al 2018], and it still says to eat 30 different vegs each week!This post also provides insight into what the microbiome experts are saying about translation of microbiome research into clinical practice. And last, my synopsis of Dr. Knight’s talk is provided (see below the light bulb) along with my listing of fav microbiome researcher labs whose work is discussed in this post! Use them and PUBMED for your own disease prevention or mitigation research. Always. Stick with the evidence for answers as this blog does.
Source: [Catinean et al 2018] An overview on the interplay between nutraceuticals and gut microbiota, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5855885/
Table 1, lists links between several diseases and changes of microbiota:
Disease
Changes in microbiota’s diversity and composition
Consequences
Reference
Inflammatory bowel disease
Less bacterial diversity ↓ the number of Bacteroides and Firmicutes
↓Firmicutes↓Faecalibacterium and Anaerosporobacter (order Clostridiales)↑Parabacteroides and Allisonella (order Aeromonadales)
increase in luminal gut ethanol production metabolism of dietary choline release of lipopolysaccharides increasing small intestinal bacterial overgrowth increasing endotoxemia increasing lipopolysaccharide →↑ insulin resistance and ↑ TNF alpha
trimethylamine is formed by gut microbiota from nutrients which contain l-carnitine, choline, phosphatidylcholine followed by the formation of trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) by hepatic enzymes increasing the plasmatic level of TMAO–increasing the risk of myocardial infarction and stroke
Dr. Rob Knight’s eleven point punch list of things that seem to be beneficial to the microbiome are:
Source: Dr. Rob Knight_11 Factors Affect Microbiome from American Gut Data, biomeonboardawareness.com/
Eat lots of plants: 5 to 30 different varieties each week preferably. This finding is so profound that“American Gut” will soon change participant food journal requirements to “only ask forfrequency on consumption of holistic food within the past month, instead of the three week food journal. This change is warranted since the long term diet, especially meat and fiber consumption, has been shown to have the largest effect on the microbiome.”
Aging increases microbiome diversity: Microbiomes are more diverse at age 50 to 60 then populations in their twenties (see above slides).
Having an IBD diagnosis means your microbiome is altered. NOTE: Many chronic and autoimmune diseases are also following suit.
The time of year alters the microbiome with a more diverse microbiome being with sun and outdoor exposure.
Antibiotics wipe the microbiome with some folks recovering relatively soon whereas others do not recover the pre-antibiotic microbiome even one year later.
Males vs females: The sex for a given microbiome can now be accurately predicted.
Sleep 8 hours for a more diverse microbiome. Less than 6 hours yields a less diverse microbiome.
BMIbut it only subtly affects the microbiome.
Plants: eating 6 to 10 each week is good, but eating 30 plus different varieties is best. (See further discussion below.)
Alcohol: one drink is helpful, more than one reduces diversity.
Frequent exercisers have a more diverse microbiome and it is best if exercise is outdoors rather than indoors.
What’s up with plants and the microbiome?
Here is a great read where Dr. Knight and Jeff Leach talk about plants (and their fiber):Can We Eat Our Way To A Healthier Microbiome? It’s Complicated. In sum, “eating too little fiber could starve the bacteria we want around. “When we starve our bacteria they eat us,” Leach says. “They eat the mucus lining – the mucin in our large intestine.” Knight adds that when we do keep our bacteria well fed, they, in turn, give off nutrients that nourish the cells that line our guts. Fiber, Knight says, “is thought to be good for your gut health over all.” You can read the post, Fiber Additives Starve Gut Microbes. They Eat Mucus Lining for more on all that! Bottom line: Harness this information to positively nudge your microbiome towards health. Note too that everyone is uniquely different so the right diet depends a lot on the individual’s lifestyle AND that individual’s microbes. More tips from the article are:
There are a lot of different ways to get fiber. Leach recommends getting it from vegetables. Eat a variety of veggies, and eat the whole thing, he recommends. “If you’re going to eat asparagus, eat the whole plant, not just the tips,” he says.
Fiber was also central to Leach’s suggestion to Stein to eat more garlic and leek. Those vegetables contain high levels of a type of fiber called inulin, which feeds actinobacteria in our guts. In fact, inulin is considered a prebiotic, since it feeds the good bacteria, or probiotics, that live inside us.
Garlic actually has antimicrobial properties, which paradoxically, could also be good thing for our microbiomes.One studyshows that garlic hurts some of the bad bacteria in our guts while leaving the good guys intact. [Filocamo et al 2012]
Eat fermented foods which contain probiotics along with foods that feed those probiotics. Fermented foods like kimchi, sauerkraut and yogurt might be surer sources of probiotics. Researchers are unclear about whether these have any lasting effect on the composition of our microbiome, but in some cases they do seem to help. “Epidemiologically there seems to be some evidence that eating fermented food is beneficial rather than harmful,” Knight says. But researchers are still trying to figure out why.
⇒ A key benefit of fiber beyond regularity, is that when the microbiome ferments it, short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) are produced.
This study, from Nutrition & Diabetes, summarizes SCFA nicely: “Colonic fermentation is a complex process that occurs through the interactions of many microbial species and involves the anaerobic breakdown of dietary fibre, protein and peptides.1, 2, 3The principal end products of colonic fermentation are the short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) acetate, propionate and butyrate, the gases hydrogen, carbon dioxide and methane4, 5, 6and energy, which is used by the microbiota for growth and maintenance of cellular functions.7Small amounts of branched chain fatty acids (iso-butyrate, valerate and iso-valerate) are also formed from protein and amino acid degradation. The amount and type of dietary fibre are among the major determinants of gut microbial composition and SCFA production patterns.8In humans, the SCFA produced account for 5–10% of total dietary energy.9) [Fernandes et al 2014]
“Don’t ever underestimate the public — the key issue is lack of knowledge about microbes, not lack of intelligence,” 
![[Catinean et al 2018] Figure 1, Microbiome and associated health problems](https://i0.wp.com/biomeonboardawareness.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Catinean-et-al-2018Microbiome-and-associated-health-problems-300x247.png?resize=300%2C247)
![[Catinean et al 2018] Figure 1, Microbiome and associated health problems](https://i0.wp.com/biomeonboardawareness.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Catinean-et-al-2018Microbiome-and-associated-health-problems.png)
