probiotics

79. Do probiotics help GI symptoms from mast cell disease?

• Some people may not be aware of this, but my first science love was microbiology. I love bacteria. They are my teeny little super guys. Mostly because they make the world go round. <3
• Yes, probiotics help symptoms from mast cell disease.
• Your body is populated with millions and millions of microbes in just about every place where your body comes into contact with the outside world. This is mostly skin, GI tract, GU tract, and upper respiratory tract.
• This is an example of symbiosis: the science term for “everybody wins.” Microbes get a steady source of food and protection from the outside world by living attached to some part of us. In return, they help us to break down molecules, make vitamins for us, and help protect us from infections by taking up all the available microbe real estate. If there’s already friendly bacteria (or yeast) living in every available place where microbes could attach to us, that helps to protect us from not so friendly microbes who need a place to latch on.
• Antibiotics and antimicrobials are in tons of over the counter of products. We are in an age where antibiotics and antimycotics are being used more than ever, often in situations where they can’t even provide benefit.
• These have the effect of killing off all the helpful microbes, leaving us in a situation where the ones that are left are the most resistant to treatment. This is a huge problem for a number of reasons, the biggest one being the genesis of super bugs, antibiotic resistant organisms that we can’t kill.
• But there’s another big reason: when you kill off helpful bacteria, it affects our day to day bodily functions. Our bodies have evolved to have this symbiotic relationship with these organisms for millennia. When we kill all those little super guys off, our body is open to infections and situations that cause inflammation.
• The population of microbes that normally lives happily inside our healthy bodies is called our commensal. If it’s in the GI tract, it’s called the GI commensal.
• We know for sure that food allergies is related at least partially to changes in the GI commensal.
• There are a number of experiments that show that if you take the GI commensal out of a healthy mouse and transplant it into a food allergic mouse, that mouse is no longer food allergic. We also know that if you take the GI commensal out of a food allergic mouse and transplant it into a healthy mouse, now you have two food allergic mice.
• Probiotics contain microbes that you can use to replace the good ones that have been killed off. Mast cell patients, and patients with other inflammatory GI diseases, report a lot of benefit with using probiotics. Mast cell patients have to be careful and need to be sure to look up the ingredients of every probiotic they try, as many of them contain triggers, like lactose. VSL3 often works pretty well in people who are reactive. Culturelle is used by lots of patients. It depends on a lot. Your mileage may vary.
• People with central lines should use caution and always be sure to wash hands and sterilize surfaces between taking probiotics and using their lines. These organisms are not supposed to be introduced to the bloodstream and could potentially cause infections, especially in people with depressed immunity.
• I would to give a shout out to MastAttack admin, Pari, who is the most relentless advocate for probiotics I have ever seen. She cares more about your use of probiotics than I care about most things.