[FollowingTheDao]

Hi neuroscientis, maybe you should look into the genetics of you own, and others, gut metabolism. I did and it change my life. (Disabled with Scizoaffective Bipolar Disorder and Ankylosing Spondylitis).

I found out I am a FUT2 non-secretor through 23andMe, unusual for a European Caucasian. So basically I cannot fight of gut microbes like you heart farmer folk.

Secretor Genotype (FUT2 gene) Is Strongly Associated with the Composition of Bifidobacteria in the Human Intestine

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Human genetic variation and the gut microbiome in disease https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg.2017.63

Since FUT2 releases fucose (Not fructose) I decided to see what foods contained fucose and try eating those. Turned out it is very high in seaweed and mushrooms, which is interesting because I have Sami heritage. Also the spuds that changes my gut microbiome were important as well, this meant reducing my short chain PUFAs as low as possible because of my FADS1 and FADS2 genetics.

Eating those regularly turned my IBD into IBNormal and it helped my brain and inflammation as well.

So "Eat (whole) foods. Not too much. Mostly plants" is quite wrong for me, genetically. In fact, when I was a (good) vegan and vegetarian my HDL was 30 with hyperlipidemia! Eating kind of keto with only seafood pushed my Hal up to 55.

As a neuroscientist you should know that Mood Disorders are highly polygenic so there is no same cause and therefore no same cure for anyone.

So can you please start looking into personalized medicine so people like me do not have to live in constant hell? Thanks.

[amelius]

> Since FUT2 releases fuctose (Not fructose)

Fuctose has no wikipedia page. Could you provide some sources?

> I found out I am a FUT2 non-secretor through 23andMe, unusual for a European Caucasian.

Wikipedia says:

> Approximately 20% of Caucasians are non-secretors due to the G428A (rs601338) and C571T (rs492602?) nonsense mutations in FUT2

20% doesn't seem extremely unusual.

[FollowingTheDao]

Yes, I fixed the spell check from fructose to fuctose, but not all the way to fucose.

20%, uncommon, unusual, whatever. It is not rare but it is not usual.

Still 20% of the people might be eating a diet that is wrong for them. But I suppose you think this does not matter? I mean are you denying the science behind this? Are you denying it helped me?

[pieter_mj]

Fuctose yourself! Kidding of course. I think there's a lot of mental health to gain by following a personalized diet taking into account your own body's "specifications" as it were.

I'm guessing current western high carb/low nutritional value diet is detrimental to mental health.

[amelius]

I was just interested and checking facts, not trying to be judgemental. Thanks for the correction.

[FollowingTheDao]

As you can understand and see I am on a razors edge when it comes to talking about this stuff, and even more so with this in the medical field. It was really the "20% is not unusual" part that skewered me in the brain because before I posted this no one here probably heard of this gene and its strong effect on the microbiome and diet.

And now I just want to add, for your interest, that Mood Disorders are not fundamentally neurological, I am sorry to say, but in fact they are immune disorders which affect neurology. You would do the mentally ill a huge favor by sending your patients to rheumatology for care.

It has been 50 years since my mother was diagnose with Bipolar Disorder and here I am now, with the same issues, and they are pretty much prescribing the same meds and looking at it in the same way. So whenever I meet a neurologist I have to express my frustration because you need to think about mood disorders in a radically new way if something is to change and being nice did not change anything. And now, when I find things out that help me I get no help from my doctors, just a "glad that worked for you" and the cold shoulder when I ask for more testing.

[mandmandam]

> Mood Disorders are not fundamentally neurological, I am sorry to say, but in fact they are immune disorders which affect neurology

This is interesting to me, thank you. The gut-brain link is fascinating.

Have you read "The Body Keeps the Score"? There are some absolutely shocking stats in that book about the correlation between early childhood trauma and mood disorders. You may find the stuff about EMDR and reconnecting with the body interesting. That said, BPD is often an outlier; as in, it doesn't respond the same as most others.

... I'm not an expert. But, I think the author of that book would agree with you on the difficulty of presenting new information to doctors/neurologists/psychiatrists. It seems to require a lot of resilience.

[FollowingTheDao]

Your are welcome.

Yes, I have read Mate's book. I assure you my fcked up childhood was one part of the problem but my genetic risk combined with a "farmer's diet" is a greater factor for me, even more so in relation to my cardiovascular and autoimmune health.

I do have a feeling that genetics is even more important than trauma and that the correlation between the two is found because of the genetics.

[limpbizkitfan]

There are very many theories regarding what is and isn’t a contributing mechanism to mental health. Nutrition is one thing, when I ate less I lost weight and had less fatigue and depression. But that happened in concert with treatment aligned with the serotonin/norepinephrine signaling theory of depression, and it worked for me, as it has very many others in regular drug studies.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to dismiss medicine right away but it was an essential 15% to the 85% of my work putting in place methods and giving myself a chance to change.

[FollowingTheDao]

> There are very many theories regarding what is and isn’t a contributing mechanism to mental health

That was pretty much the whole point of my comment. Why are there many theories? Because their are are many causes. Until we start looking at every one individually no one will get well.

And I am in no way dismissing medicine, I only want doctors to start practicing it again.

[bckr]

> But I suppose you think this does not matter

That's an ungenerous interpretation when otherwise the GP demonstrated curiosity about your provided information. It's easily read as "this may be important to more people than you implied".

[FollowingTheDao]

The statement "20% doesn't seem extremely unusual" is a total write off of those 20% of people. You see, he is looking for a single case of disorder and there is not one. This is frustrating and ignores the huge genetic diversity in humanity.

As someone with Inuit heritage this is harmful to me. For 80% of people a vegetarian diet will be helpful. But for 20% it is probably not helpful. But all you will read in the news is how a vegetarian diet is the only diet to cure heart disease, etc...

Inulin is in every food now because it is "healthy". Do you know what inulin does to my gut? But this is one of those "healthy" foods.

[PlatinumHarp]

I think it's a typo, it should be Fucose not Fuctose.