Posted by mako23 on April 26, 2015, at 20:01:24
Just the mention of colonic irrigation rightly deserves the cries of quackery and strong rebukes.
So please be aware that I am not repeating the old rubbish of faecal matter being stuck to the walls of the colon of faecal matter entering the blood stream and poisoning the body. I fully accept that our bodies do a good job in protecting us and removing faecal matter from our body.
I also accept that colonic irrigation can be dangerous and totally unnecessary for vast majority of the population.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2028253/Colonic-irrigation-wrecked-life-Hairdressers-ordeal-raises-questions-treatments-safety.html
I have to be honest I did try colonic irrigation once for flatuance issues and it did work well. Years latter for the same issue I did try a Ayurveda herb to cleanse my system out ( which did a very powerful job..almost to well) which had the same effect. To be honest if I had choice between the two I would take colonic irrigation over the Ayurveda medicine. Colonic irrigation is not too unpleasant the indian ayureveda was a shock to the system and most unpleasant. Both treatments worked well for the issue of extreme flatauance and my wife I think was even happier.
I suffer from Gad and sometimes depression if my anxiety gets bad. I use to suffer from bad panic attacks but for some reason that's not a issue anymore ( I haven't got a clue why). I was worried that colonic irrigation would effect me negatively in regards to anxiety but I didn't notice any change. When I did the colonic irrigation the lady did sell me some probiotic pills and stated that I needed to take these if I wanted the treatment to have a better effect. My response was to put the pills into the fridge were they stayed there for six months before being thrown out.This story happened maybe 8 years ago when I lived in England recently, I moved back to New Zealand to be with my father who was very ill. In England I was on the GSK peroxetine formulation for my condition and apart from one time ( Is stopped taking the medicine) It did a great job in keeping my gad in check.
When I went to new zealand ( it has a free health care system like england) I could only get the generic version of peroxetine that did not work as well. I had tried generics in england with same effect so i went back the gsk formulation while living there.
So the doctor tried me on escatlopram and zoloft which worked a little, but no where near as well as gsk peroxetine or even generic peroxetine
So the clinic decided to send me to the pdoc and this is where this story makes more sense.
The pdoc was a walking encyclopedia of body brain chemistry and not a pill pusher by any means. I studied biochemistry at university and thought I knew some aspects of body brain chemistry. This guy put me to shame. The only other guy with similar knowledge was Larry Hoover who I use to read a lot of untill he stopped posting for a period.
When In england I had a lot of tests done such as organic urine tests, and a lot from biolab uk which seems to be a truly reputable English lab. My pdoc was very interested in seeing my results. When he did see them within two minutes of going over twenty pages of results he said you have gut dsybosis. My initial thought was hes a quack but he assured me that there was real research going about in this area.
That was about a month ago and since then my results from my tests which I have been closely looking at again ( they had sat in my draw for 8 years ) start making more sense.
Years ago I did a biolab test where they took a blood sample from me and then told me to have a protein meal and then have a blood test a couple of hours later. The test is called short chain polypeptides in blood serum where they measure how many polypeptides get through your intestinal wall. My results showed above reference range for peptides over 10 amino acid length. The report indicated that some of these long chain polypeptide mimic hormones and have metabolic consequences. A Intestinal permeability using polyethylene glycol test showed also above reference range permeability in my gut.
To be honest when I got those results my initial though was quackery. Leaky gut syndrome is still considered complete rubbish, by many medical authorities. However since revisiting these results and looking at the methodology used I'm not sure that leaky gut syndrome is complete rubbish
My organix in urine test showed high dhppa levels. There seems to be a quite a lot of arguments over dhppa with conflicting view points with one lab saying there a indication of good bacteria while pushing that hphpa is a indication of clostridial bacteria.
Other articles from other labs indicate that dhppa is also a measurement of clostridial species. A gut fermentation profile also indicated a large amount of ethanol in my system ( three times over reference) which indicated yeast over growth . Just a note of interest my son seems to have similar issues to me and he also tested high for yeast bacteria ( different test used)
http://medind.nic.in/daa/t10/i2/daat10i2p345.pdf
The relevance of all this information is there seems to be a lot of research going on in this area. I do accept that a lot of it is new and we are still in early days but a lot of reputable research from universities is been done in this area ( None by drugs companies no points for guessing why)
A lot of the work seems to indicate that some of the gut bacteria can produce neurotoxins or affect the vagus nerves. Tests with with mice do seem to indicate that the therapeutic pathway invoked by good bacteria is via the vagus nerve.
I'm certainly not indicating every one with a mental health is issue is caused by gut bacteria, im saying a minority might maybe etc.
I'm starting to consider that I might be one of these people. Ive recently been tested for clostridial diff which was negative but a whole family of clostridial species produce dhppa so the c.diff test is not so significant.
I also have the joy of having a test that indicated high lactic acid above reference and lactic acid has a strong link to panic disorders. The worrying issue is that some prebiotic species produce d-latic acid which some individuals (maybe me) can not clear
So I find my self in the position that If I find myself in the position that I might have abnormal gut flora which could be contributing ( not all of it) to my anxiety. Just taking normal pro-biotic could make things worse via increased d-lactic acid production. lactobacillus rhamnosus doesn't produce a lot of d-lactic acid and has had promising results in tests. type "lactobacillus rhamnosus anxiety" in google to see results.
However just adding good bacteria to your system doesn't mean your bad bacteria will go away and die. Clostridial species are particularly hard to remove. In fact Clostridial Diff kills people in extreme cases. The standard procedure is antibiotic that combat this type of bacteria. However this is not always successful as bacteria comes more resistant to dwindling supply of effective drugs.
Fecal matter transplants have proved to be effective in many cases of Clostridial Diff and the ongoing research in this area has proved to be interesting even in the possibility of mental health improvements.I also so a paper showing improvements in Clostridial infection using colonic irrigation or colonic lavage (same as colonic irrigation but avoids using the quack word colonic irrigation)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21865943
also some hospital do colonic lavage for clostridialAlso some Faecal matter transplants web sites also recommend colonic irrigation before receiving donor faecal matter. Does make some sense to wash out your current faecal matter before putting in new.
Many people would just suggest that taking antibacterial agents against clostrial species is the way to go. However when clostridial species die they can release a whole load of toxins some patients have reported extreme reactions in the initial stages of treatment
Its often called JarischHerxheimer reaction due to the doctor who noticed this when trying to cure patients with syphilis. However other pathogens including clostridial can have the same effect when they die. Some patients have reported it can take 3 to 7 days for this to get better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarisch%E2%80%93Herxheimer_reactionTo be honest id rather not go through that experience. The other alternative is to flush my system out with a drug or herb. This way does seem ideal but some clostridia species can attach themselves to the colon walls. (Sorry no link here) However there are many links that show clostridias can attack the intestinal walls, im assuming that by attacking the wall they must attach to it. Hence make them harder to dislodged by a laxative. I dont have direct proof of this but I hope some people can see my logic here.
However colonic irrigation might remove these bacteria on the colon walls. I must admit that might not do this as well.Sorry for such a long post, a lot of people might be wondering still what this post is about
In short I believe that gut flora can affect mental health (many will disagree). Changing gut flora or removing bad pathogens is easier said than done
All known methods seems to have issues and dangers or provide only a partial solution
Just taking prebiotics does not remove bad gut flora
Colonic Irrigation (might) provide a solution of getting rid of bad bacteria (and good bacteria) and then taking prebiotics and probiotics including resistant starch to repopulate the gut with good bacteria
Faecal matter transplant might provide a means of repopulating your gut with good bacteria as long as the donor has good gut flora
I also believe negative gut bacteria only effects a minority of people with mental health issues. Even then its not a cure allRegards Mako
Please feel free to comment or disagree
poster:mako23
thread:1078502
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/alter/20150301/msgs/1078502.html