Diabetes Metab. 2009 Sep;35(4):262-72. Epub 2009 May 5.
Intestinal microflora and metabolic diseases.

Serino M, Luche E, Chabo C, Amar J, Burcelin R.

Recent advances in molecular sequencing technology have allowed researchers to answer major questions regarding the relationship between a vast genomic diversity-such as found in the intestinal microflora-and host physiology. Over the past few years, it has been established that, in obesity, type 1 diabetes and Crohn's disease-to cite but a few-the intestinal microflora play a pathophysiological role and can induce, transfer or prevent the outcome of such conditions. A few of the molecular vectors responsible for this regulatory role have been determined. Some are related to control of the immune, vascular, endocrine and nervous systems located in the intestines. However, more important is the fact that the intestinal microflora-to-host relationship is bidirectional, with evidence of an impact of the host genome on the intestinal microbiome. This means that the ecology shared by the host and gut microflora should now be considered a new player that can be manipulated, using pharmacological and nutritional approaches, to control physiological functions and pathological outcomes. What now remains is to demonstrate the molecular connection between the intestinal microflora and metabolic diseases. We propose here that the proinflammatory lipopolysaccharides play a causal role in the onset of metabolic disorders.

Increasingly, studies are showing that changes in the microflora content of the digestive tract can be linked to metabolic illnesses, including type II (adult onset) diabetes and obesity. Blood group and secretor status play an important role in conditioning the overall characteristics of the digestive tract, including influencing the appearance and frequency of many strains of bacteria.

Pathol Biol (Paris). 2008 Jul;56(5):305-9. Epub 2008 Jan 30.
Role of gut microflora in the development of obesity and insulin resistance following high-fat diet feeding.

Cani PD, Delzenne NM, Amar J, Burcelin R.

A recent growing number of evidences shows that the increased prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes cannot be solely attributed to changes in the human genome, nutritional habits, or reduction of physical activity in our daily lives. Gut microflora may play an even more important role in maintaining human health. Recent data suggests that gut microbiota affects host nutritional metabolism with consequences on energy storage. Several mechanisms are proposed, linking events occurring in the colon and the regulation of energy metabolism. The present review discusses new findings that may explain how gut microbiota can be involved in the development of obesity and insulin resistance. Recently, studies have highlighted some key aspects of the mammalian host-gut microbial relationship. Gut microbiota could now be considered as a "microbial organ" localized within the host. Therefore, specific strategies aiming to regulate gut microbiota could be useful means to reduce the impact of high-fat feeding on the occurrence of metabolic diseases.

It has been known for quite a while that the colons of obese individuals are considerably longer than non-obese people. Now the idea is increasingly being advanced that obesity is, in part, related to greater "energy harvest." This would appear to throw the time-honored "just eat less and exercise more" argument right out the window and verify the common observance that many overweight people do not consume any greater amount of calories than many non-obese people.

J Pediatr Gastroenterol Nutr. 2009 Mar;48(3):249-56.
Intestinal microbiota during infancy and its implications for obesity.

Reinhardt C, Reigstad CS, Bäckhed F.

Sahlgrenska Center for Cardiovascular and Metabolic Research/Wallenberg Laboratory, Department of Molecular and Clinical Medicine, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden.

Obesity is a worldwide epidemic, threatening both industrialized and developing countries, and is accompanied by a dramatic increase in obesity-related disorders, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Recent studies have shown that the gut microbial community (microbiota) is an environmental factor that regulates obesity by increasing energy harvest from the diet and by regulating peripheral metabolism. However, there are no data on how obesogenic microbiotas are established and whether this process is determined during infancy. The sterile fetus is born into a microbial world and is immediately colonized by numerous species originating from the surrounding ecosystems, especially the maternal vaginal and fecal microflora. This initial microbiota develops into a complex ecosystem in a predictable fashion determined by internal (eg, oxygen depletion) and external (eg, mode of birth, impact of environment, diet, hospitalization, application of antibiotics) factors. We discuss how the gut microbiota regulates obesity and how environmental factors that affect the establishment of the gut microbiota during infancy may contribute to obesity later in life.

A new book by Dr. Walter Crinnion entitled Clean, Green, & Lean is about to hit the bookshelves. I think Walter's work with detoxification is tremendously important, which is why I asked him lecture at IFHI 2005 and 2007. Last week I gave out advance copies to all my students and they just devoured it. This book is a great addition to any bookshelf and I was proud to have been asked to contribute the book's Foreword:

“Woe to the book you can read without constantly wondering about the author!” Romanian philosopher and essayist EM Cioran.

I think Ciroan makes a rarely recognized and unguarded point. People write books, and it is often the personality and skills of the author that make the difference between a series of accumulated platitudes and a cogent and effective call to action.

While most of the current popular books on cleansing and detoxification approach the subject from the perspective of fantasy and folklore, this book grounds itself in evidence and positions itself firmly on the side of science. Be assured that the valuable advice you’ll receive here is proven, factual and safe. You will be reading the book finally written by the man ‘who wrote the book’ on the subject.

Having known Dr. Walter Crinnion for over three decades, I can assure you that there is no better authority in nutritional medicine on the subjects of detoxification and cleansing. Better yet I can report that the guidance you are about to receive in this book is given in that friendly, informal style that characterizes Walter’s genuine personality and temperament and which serves to make him such as popular instructor and much sought-after lecturer.

A quick study of the book’s beginning, middle and end can best allow us to appreciate the sheer conceptual scale of this work.

Walter begins by taking the reader on a trip to the invisible world of the hidden toxins that permeate our everyday life, uncovering the hidden threats behind pesticides, PCBs and DDT and describes the nine classes of toxic compounds. In short order, you’ll find out how to detoxify non-organic produce and cleanse you home environment. His advice is sound and practicable and ranges from the latest biochemistry and genomics to something as simple as taking your shoes off before you enter your home.

After identifying the problem, the second part of the book launches into the basics of naturopathic detoxification. There is an extensive discussion of the importance of cleansing the bowels --advice as valid now as when it was first offered by Hippocrates, the father of medicine, over two thousand years ago. How to block fat absorption using safe and commonly available herbal remedies, enhancing the detoxification mechanisms of the liver and kidneys, balancing the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ estrogens in the body and some terrific supplement advice round out the second part of the book.

The final third of the book is where your ‘Clean Green and Lean’ program is developed. It allows you to work towards a cleaner, greener life through a guided step-by-step approach. You’ll begin by purging and reorganizing your food pantry. Then, by using a daily journal, you’ll learn how to use an elimination process to help identify problematic foods. This section is capped off by a terrific recipe collection and an extensive and helpful collection of outside resources.

Over the years I’ve seen Dr. Walter Crinnion literally give patients back their own lives; often as the happy ending to an otherwise sorry tale of missed diagnoses, therapeutic dead-ends and thousands of wasted dollars. It is my great honor and pleasure to introduce you to his first book.

Finally I would like to single out the one characteristic of Walter’s that I treasure above all others: the tremendous enthusiasm he has for this work and his mission.

The word enthusiasm comes from Greek en theos signifying ‘the God within’. That is why I’m sure that you will soon be wondering about this special person, whose first book is truly the result of being blessed with the ways and means to say those essential things that are inside him.

Dr. D'Adamo,

I am aware that you may not answer this question, but I will attempt because I am very confused. I understand the concept of eating for your blood type. But, as a cancer survivor and a Type A - I'm having trouble connecting the soy issue. I read an answer you wrote on your web site, but it was so medically scientific I couldn't understand.

Do you believe that soy is linked to cancer? If so, do you believe it is linked to Type A's? How do you justify putting someone on a high soy diet and not be concerned about cancer?

Thank you for your time.

M.

Soy is not linked to cancer. Some cancers are estrogen sensitive and the theory is that since soy contains a form of plant estrogen, these plant estrogens might work to stimulate cancer, just as the biological forms of estrogen do.

However, soy estrogens are very weak estrogens (tamoxifen, by the way, is also a weak estrogen) so in most situations they block the estrogen receptor, more than stimulate it. Soy also has two other functions which make it desirable in cancer patients, particularly those who are type A. It contains a protein, soy bean agglutinin, which can target cancer cells directly and help to kill them.

The flavones in soy, in particular genistein help keep genes methylated, which tends to suppress any cancer tendencies. Finally soy is rich in saponin molecules which has independent ant-cancer mechanisms of their own. A 2008 Japanese study was published on soy consumption and rates of breast cancer. This study looked at 24,226 Japanese women aged 40 to 69. Women who had the most consistently high levels of genistein had the lowest rates of breast cancer.Historically, breast cancer rates in the United States have been 4-7 times those in Asia, whereas isoflavone intake in the United States is less than 1% that in Asian populations.

You will hear and read a lot of garbage about soy on the internet. If you were to take the advice of some of these sites and authorities, you might as well give up most nuts, fruits and vegetables since they contribute more phytoestrogens into the average American diet than do soy products. Yet Americans have higher breast cancer rates than cultures where soy is a bigger part of the diet. Finally, many of the anti-soy crusaders point to a potential for soy to block mineral absorption, as it contains chemicals phytates. This might be true if soy were consumed in astronomical doses, but better evidence suggests that phytate containing foods also appear to block the development of colon cancer as well.

Bear in mind it is not a perfect food in everyone. However if you look at the dynamics of the type A immune system, it would appear to be a very useful food in these people.

"Islands -- I don't get them.
Surrounded by water, poor things."

Patrizia, in Antonioni's L'Adventura

The quote above is from the delightful 'Waterfront' by Phillip Lopate. The book is literary tour around Manhattan island, from the perspective of a social historian. I am a sucker for architectural history, especially of my beloved borough of Brooklyn ('Fourth Largest City in America'). About a year ago, I embarked on a project to determine the exact whereabouts of original Dutch settlement of New Utrecht, a neighborhood of Brooklyn close to where I grew up, and probably most famous for supplying the high school shots at the opening of the iconic TV show 'Welcome Back Kotter.'

From old landholding maps found on the internet, I could superimpose the old street drawings of New Utrecht as layers in Photoshop over the Mapquest diagrams of the modern area. To my surprise, the town center of New Utrecht lay within the parking lot of a ramshackle discount store where as a child I would get my school supplies, and whose owner in 1969 once tried to convince several very skeptical kids that a chunk of sidewalk in the display case under the checkout counter was actually a moon rock from Apollo 11.

To understand the apparent lack of purpose for that interaction, you must read some of Arthur Miller's remembrances of his childhood in Brooklyn .

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The Internet site The Edge asked a few hundred deep thinkers "What's your law?"? I liked Eberhard Zangger's two laws.

Zangger's First Law

Most scientific breakthroughs are nothing else than the discovery of the obvious.

Zangger's Second Law

Truly great science is always ahead of its time.

As examples, he gives:

The Hungarian surgeon Ignaz Semmelweiss in 1847 reduced the death rate in his hospital from twelve to two percent, simply by washing hands between operations -- a concept that today would be advocated by a four year old child. When Semmelweiss urged his colleagues to introduce hygiene to the operating rooms, they had him committed to a mental hospital where he eventually died.

The German meteorologist Alfred Wegener discovered in 1913 what every ten year old looking at a globe will notice immediately: That the Atlantic coasts of the African and South American continents have matching contours and thus may have been locked together some time ago. The experts needed sixty more years to comprehend the concept.

Heinrich Schliemann's excavation of Bronze Age Mycenae and Tiryns in Greece was considered by English archaeologists in The Times' as the remains of some obscure barbarian tribe' from the Byzantine period. In particular, the so-called prehistoric palace in Tiryns was labelled "the most remarkable hallucination of an unscientific enthusiast that has ever appeared in literature."

The theories of the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud were called "a case for the police" during a neurologists' congress in Hamburg in 1910.

I've spent the beginning of this New Year cleaning up the various sites that I administer. In finishing up work on the genomic wiki-like knowledge base that we built several years ago, I thought it might be helpful to suggest 25 of what I feel are the best articles on The Individualist.

These are not exactly 'consumer level' stuff; more likely it would be called 'pro-sumer level' and I recommend these articles for those die-hards who just have to know everything. If you are still trying to figure out what to do with spelt, tofu or agave syrup, you may want to wait a while before tackling them.

1. ABH Antigens
2. A-like Tumor Antigens
3. ABO Blood Group
4. ABO and Secretor Genetics
5. Agglutination
6. Blood and Anthropology
7. Biology of Carbohydrates
8. Chromosome 9q34
9. Disease and Blood Groups
10. Epigenetics
11. Founder Effect
12. Genes and Environment
13. Glycation
14. Glycolipids
15. Glycoproteins
16. Joseph Charles Aub
17. Lamarckism Revisited
18. Lectins
19. Lectins Resist Digestion
20. Lectins and the Intestines
21. DNA Methylation
22. Phenotypic Plasticity
23. Polyamines
24. Secretor Status
25. Stress Blood Groups