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Does this mean, if you eat meat, you will encourage meat eating bacteria, because when they run out of meat they will start looking for meat to eat and because we are made of meat they will start eating us?

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Oooooh, good one! I would hope not; it's a possibility in some cases (i.e. pathogens like C. perfringens, which can cause gas gangrene), but our bodies have a few mechanisms in place to prevent this.

First is the layer of mucus that sits between our intestinal epithelial cells and the gut lumen. That generally keeps gut guys in the gut. Second is the high oxygen content in all our cells and blood; most of the guys that live in your gut have little or no oxygen tolerance, so if they start chewing into cells they might get hit with a) a burst of oxygen and b) a load of blood, which contains immune cells.

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Bifidobacteria (except for animals) make plasmalogens ;-)

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Dude, another excellent dive! Two questions along the fungi lines:

1. You've got me eating/making Natto (haha, spider beans), but since it is a fungi (the natto spores, anyway), does it's digestion signal back to the brain to eat more Natto because it is getting a big source of vitamin K/beneficial compounds? Anecdotally, on YouTube, so many comments are there saying they tried it once and craved it a few days later.

2. I've stopped buying ANY supplements and wanted to try just using the whole food for the various other compounds involved. You mentioned in this article about Mushrooms...I've been trying to get the best info on using a UVB lamp to boost the Vitamin D3 content of mushrooms at home and use them as a bioavailable source of D3. Any leads on the time/amount of rays needed/benefits? There are some out there, but they are...sketchy and I know there has been a study, but it is restricted. Cheers

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Yessss, love a new convert! Point of clarification: it's a bacterium, not a fungus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_subtilis

1. Yes! If for example you're low on vitamin K, then an "operant conditioning" response is just a sign of your brain working the way it's supposed to.

(Have problem like vitamin K insufficiency that makes you feel bad in subtle ways) -> (do thing that makes it better) -> (associate doing the thing with feeling better) -> (want to do the thing again). Arguably that logic tree is a major part of the reason we have things like memory and the capacity for inference. But once you're at full vitamin K sufficiency, you'd see what they call "extinction", where the behavior stops producing the good feeling so you stop feeling motivated to do the thing.

2. Well shit, I did a whole post on cholesterol metabolism and didn't even think to mention vitamin D! Fungi only do D2; D3 only comes from getting sun on your skin or eating something that's gotten sun on its skin.

Where are you located, latitude-wise?

Tables 1 and 3 in this study tested vitamin D2 contents resulting from "tanning" mushrooms at a variety of latitudes, exposure times, and weather conditions. Unless you're way north, a few hours in the sun should do, even this time of year.

https://www.longdom.org/open-access/a-nutritionally-meaningful-increase-in-vitamin-d-in-retail-mushrooms-is-attainable-by-exposure-to-sunlight-prior-to-consumption-2155-9600.1000236.pdf

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Feb 23, 2023Liked by Stephen Skolnick

Ahh, bacterium...yum...subtilis...still stringy, but good.

Years ago (back in Mar 2011), I started my journey on the gut microbiome from the Freakonomics Podcast : https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-power-of-poop/

Since then, I ferment about everything...Sourdough, Water Kefir, L. Reuteri, L. Gasseri and L. Shirota Yogurt, Real Pickles and Veg, Kombucha...etc.

I've read about 40 books on the gut microbiome and finally, the best one that distilled all of the outrageousness out but kept the real science in was Spoon-Fed by Tim Spector. I start his ZOE study this weekend with a glucose monitor and sending in blood and poop samples ...not mixed. (dodgeball reference).

But one you might enjoy is: This Is Your Brain on Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society by Kathleen McAuliffe. I mean, their theory is sound: rabies changes the behavior of the subject to spread more rabies...maybe when a person gets the herpes virus, it changes the behavior to spread the virus? She thinks you're cute...or, it's just the virus talking...

On K2: Interesting video you might like ...the mechanism that K2-7 uses to convert osteocalcin into an active form is really well explained after you triggered my search for "WTF is Natto" with your Natto Superfood article! https://youtu.be/5-KGceRenn4 (at around 8:27)

Lastly, I live just north of Dallas, TX. Thanks for the link to the study, I was thinking it would take days to expose the mushrooms, which is why I was looking at the UVB lamp. It appears that only about 15 minutes on a clear day should do it. I thought if I left them out for a whole day, the birds would have a feast!

This was the study that used a pulsed UVB hi energy lamp and it took 2-4 seconds to get a huge increase in vitamin D. It also discussed the dry versus wet versus freeze-dried as well as the half-life of vitamin D after exposure during storage. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6213178/

I was thinking, pulsed dried mushroom powder could last as a supplement/flavoring powder all winter.

Cheers, brother...I look forward to your future book as I really enjoy your writing style, humor and practical approach. These articles are saved in my iPad to share with other pilots (I'm a commercial airline pilot...and cockpit conversations tend to steer to using blackberries to mitigate DNA damage at altitude) I airdrop them with a link so you will have more subscribers!

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