There *are* consumer fecal biome test offerings – 'TinyHealth' is one – that can give a read on whether a person's R Gnavus is high or not.
But, I suspect you'd need a bunch more data from a broad population of the healthy to have a strong opinion as to whether high R Gnavus – alone, without any other entangled genetic/biome/diet/environment factors – is a reliable indicator of risk in someone who otherwise has no symptoms.
Woah. Does this imply that a fecal microbiome transplant, from a source with zero-to-low levels of Ruminococcus gnavus, would be sufficient to cure schizophrenia?
It would have to be the right protocol—heavy antibiotic pretreatment, moviprep for good measure, anaerobically prepared donor material etc.—but yes. There may be alternatives to FMT, though; a bacteriophage active against gnavus, maybe some things that are antagonistic to its growth or the activity of the AADC enzyme. I suspect that hydrocinnamic acid and indole-3-propionic acid play a role in keeping gnavus down in a healthy microbiome. Stay tuned.
Exactly my question. As readers of Skolnick likely aware, DIY FMT (as treatment for C Diff infections, oither bowel maladies, or other issues) is controversial but not that hard.
At least *some* schizophrenics likely have sufficient awareness & desire for improvement to consider self-experimentation here. That might quickly hint enough improvement to then do more formal studies.
You argue persuasively, but it's a really bold claim. Given the fact that case studies have claimed cure (or reduction of symptoms) in bipolar with FMT a similar thing could be happening there (on that note, you should really get samples of Alex Dudley's stools to identify what he has that seems to cure it).
The only flaw in your argument I can think of, assuming your chemistry is right, is that this means we should expect schizophrenics to spontaneously recover with the right sorts of antibiotics, which nobody has reported happening. Unless there's literally nothing that reduces it, which seems unlikely.
Well, in one respect this is another mayonnaise problem (see my other comment on this post): if you have a few psychotic episodes and, after a course of antibiotics, never have another...well, that must not have been schizophrenia, because schizophrenia is by-definition incurable and lifelong once it starts. The book "Brain on Fire" is a spectacular case study; a journalist goes insane for a month or two and spontaneously makes a total recovery. The doctors retroactively diagnose it as some kind of autoimmune encephalitis IIRC.
Interestingly enough, the book contains a scan of a handwritten note she took during one of her doctor's visits during the episode. It's largely incoherent, but one thing that jumped out at me was the disconnected phrase "put be antibiotic" scrawled on the page, which sounds like what I might write if I were trying diligently to take notes while on 50mg of 2C-E and someone told me "We're going to put you on an antibiotic". It's not mentioned anywhere else in the text, presumably because antibiotics are such a common thing that even she—in poring over her own case file for clues from the time which she has no memory of—didn't think it was relevant.
I should also point out that many patients experience years-long remissions where their positive symptoms are more or less fully under control, but typically they don't stop taking their meds. Because a severe dopamine depletion appears to be a major component of the negative symptoms, and the drugs used to treat the positive symptoms are dopamine antagonists...you can see why it'd be hard to suss out the recovery signal from the noise.
See my previous post on MS as well for a tangential but related discussion of why you might not expect spontaneous recovery where an organism has a solid fitness advantage, like the ability to burn the most complex and energetically expensive amino acid, to prevent any potential competitors from using it.
I want to be sympathetic to the anecdote but I'm struggling to find the handwritten note evidence very compelling. People in psychosis say and write a lot of random stuff for reasons you'll never understand.
Admittedly in the future we'll probably see most mental illnesses not as distinct disorders but as syndromes, but for psychosis in particular it's already known there are many diverse reasons why it may occur, even if the mechanics aren't well understood. Lack of sleep and loneliness among them. But you can narrow down and isolate a more 'pure' schizophrenia by setting the criteria to having 2+ psychotic episodes plus evidence of negative symptoms, no drug use and no mania. Plus a loss of cognitive function, particularly cognitive flexibility, after every episode. This does cut out a lot people who probably do have schizophrenia, but it's a criteria that I suspect has the highest sensitivity, so that works for what we're talking about. I've never heard of such a case achieving full remission off medication.
You can be fairly certain that it's not the drugs masking it for two reasons. 1, because it's actually it's very common for people to go off antipsychotics (as you can imagine, they're not very pleasant, people become convinced they've recovered now etc) and then experience another episode, or experience another episode after a period of time while taking the meds anyway. 2, because the negative symptoms are often far more severe than the dopamine antagonism caused by antipsychotics (otherwise people who take them for bipolar or those who are diagnosed with schizophrenia without negative symptoms would complain about gaining much more severe negative symptoms than they do), so people would still report relief after the right antibiotics.
There could be something to the idea that somehow R. Gnavus in people who suffer psychosis is stronger than its neighbours and that's what's causing the problems. But then you're moving the argument into that it's more an ecosystem problem, which while I find it more convincing, but is much less simplistic. It would also explain why schizophrenics seem to fare better in the developing world, where their diet is probably better.
But there's still problems even with that hypothesis. Like, why haven't we heard any case studies of people recovering from schizophrenia with FMT like they do from bipolar? Why isn't it showing the pattern of increasing strongly over time, like most other conditions where there's a suspected microbiome element like most other mental illnesses, chronic conditions etc. Why is it more prevalent in men?
There have to be trials of fecal transplants in schizophrenia, though if what you are saying is accurate, the biggest impact would be on patients who would be very challenging to be able consent to that kind of intervention.
You would think! But to my knowledge there have not been. I've been trying to orchestrate one for years now, but it's a heavy lift and I've got my hands full at the moment trying to cure heart disease. This is next.
Holy shit you might have actually done it. If you're right about this you deserve a Nobel prize.
How might I use this information to help someone I know (or test whether they could be helped)? Or test whether someone is at risk?
US-based? Shoot me an email, I'll send the metagenomics sampling kit.
There *are* consumer fecal biome test offerings – 'TinyHealth' is one – that can give a read on whether a person's R Gnavus is high or not.
But, I suspect you'd need a bunch more data from a broad population of the healthy to have a strong opinion as to whether high R Gnavus – alone, without any other entangled genetic/biome/diet/environment factors – is a reliable indicator of risk in someone who otherwise has no symptoms.
Woah. Does this imply that a fecal microbiome transplant, from a source with zero-to-low levels of Ruminococcus gnavus, would be sufficient to cure schizophrenia?
It would have to be the right protocol—heavy antibiotic pretreatment, moviprep for good measure, anaerobically prepared donor material etc.—but yes. There may be alternatives to FMT, though; a bacteriophage active against gnavus, maybe some things that are antagonistic to its growth or the activity of the AADC enzyme. I suspect that hydrocinnamic acid and indole-3-propionic acid play a role in keeping gnavus down in a healthy microbiome. Stay tuned.
Exactly my question. As readers of Skolnick likely aware, DIY FMT (as treatment for C Diff infections, oither bowel maladies, or other issues) is controversial but not that hard.
At least *some* schizophrenics likely have sufficient awareness & desire for improvement to consider self-experimentation here. That might quickly hint enough improvement to then do more formal studies.
You argue persuasively, but it's a really bold claim. Given the fact that case studies have claimed cure (or reduction of symptoms) in bipolar with FMT a similar thing could be happening there (on that note, you should really get samples of Alex Dudley's stools to identify what he has that seems to cure it).
The only flaw in your argument I can think of, assuming your chemistry is right, is that this means we should expect schizophrenics to spontaneously recover with the right sorts of antibiotics, which nobody has reported happening. Unless there's literally nothing that reduces it, which seems unlikely.
Well, in one respect this is another mayonnaise problem (see my other comment on this post): if you have a few psychotic episodes and, after a course of antibiotics, never have another...well, that must not have been schizophrenia, because schizophrenia is by-definition incurable and lifelong once it starts. The book "Brain on Fire" is a spectacular case study; a journalist goes insane for a month or two and spontaneously makes a total recovery. The doctors retroactively diagnose it as some kind of autoimmune encephalitis IIRC.
Interestingly enough, the book contains a scan of a handwritten note she took during one of her doctor's visits during the episode. It's largely incoherent, but one thing that jumped out at me was the disconnected phrase "put be antibiotic" scrawled on the page, which sounds like what I might write if I were trying diligently to take notes while on 50mg of 2C-E and someone told me "We're going to put you on an antibiotic". It's not mentioned anywhere else in the text, presumably because antibiotics are such a common thing that even she—in poring over her own case file for clues from the time which she has no memory of—didn't think it was relevant.
I should also point out that many patients experience years-long remissions where their positive symptoms are more or less fully under control, but typically they don't stop taking their meds. Because a severe dopamine depletion appears to be a major component of the negative symptoms, and the drugs used to treat the positive symptoms are dopamine antagonists...you can see why it'd be hard to suss out the recovery signal from the noise.
See my previous post on MS as well for a tangential but related discussion of why you might not expect spontaneous recovery where an organism has a solid fitness advantage, like the ability to burn the most complex and energetically expensive amino acid, to prevent any potential competitors from using it.
I want to be sympathetic to the anecdote but I'm struggling to find the handwritten note evidence very compelling. People in psychosis say and write a lot of random stuff for reasons you'll never understand.
Admittedly in the future we'll probably see most mental illnesses not as distinct disorders but as syndromes, but for psychosis in particular it's already known there are many diverse reasons why it may occur, even if the mechanics aren't well understood. Lack of sleep and loneliness among them. But you can narrow down and isolate a more 'pure' schizophrenia by setting the criteria to having 2+ psychotic episodes plus evidence of negative symptoms, no drug use and no mania. Plus a loss of cognitive function, particularly cognitive flexibility, after every episode. This does cut out a lot people who probably do have schizophrenia, but it's a criteria that I suspect has the highest sensitivity, so that works for what we're talking about. I've never heard of such a case achieving full remission off medication.
You can be fairly certain that it's not the drugs masking it for two reasons. 1, because it's actually it's very common for people to go off antipsychotics (as you can imagine, they're not very pleasant, people become convinced they've recovered now etc) and then experience another episode, or experience another episode after a period of time while taking the meds anyway. 2, because the negative symptoms are often far more severe than the dopamine antagonism caused by antipsychotics (otherwise people who take them for bipolar or those who are diagnosed with schizophrenia without negative symptoms would complain about gaining much more severe negative symptoms than they do), so people would still report relief after the right antibiotics.
There could be something to the idea that somehow R. Gnavus in people who suffer psychosis is stronger than its neighbours and that's what's causing the problems. But then you're moving the argument into that it's more an ecosystem problem, which while I find it more convincing, but is much less simplistic. It would also explain why schizophrenics seem to fare better in the developing world, where their diet is probably better.
But there's still problems even with that hypothesis. Like, why haven't we heard any case studies of people recovering from schizophrenia with FMT like they do from bipolar? Why isn't it showing the pattern of increasing strongly over time, like most other conditions where there's a suspected microbiome element like most other mental illnesses, chronic conditions etc. Why is it more prevalent in men?
It's literally called Ruminococcus. Ruminate. For people hearing voices. Nominative determinism strikes again!
Nominiative determinism is naming an organ the "appendix" before you knew it actually maintained a list of everything in the biological book lol.
this is fascinating stuff! also check this out - https://www.sciencealert.com/an-early-warning-signal-of-a-silent-killer-cancer-may-hide-in-your-poop
Digging the breakdown
Wake me when you find the IQ bacteria.
Wordcel or shape rotator
Shape rotator please. I need to level up my 4D chess game before the big match this weekend.
Curious if you have read Brain Energy by Chris Palmer and if yes, how do you situate your theory in relation to his work?
There have to be trials of fecal transplants in schizophrenia, though if what you are saying is accurate, the biggest impact would be on patients who would be very challenging to be able consent to that kind of intervention.
You would think! But to my knowledge there have not been. I've been trying to orchestrate one for years now, but it's a heavy lift and I've got my hands full at the moment trying to cure heart disease. This is next.