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by CrHn3 1088 days ago
This article conflates diversity with gut health. It has not been proven that more diversity is necessarily better[1]. In fact, in infants a less diverse b. infantis dominant environment is probably advantageous[2].

If you're having a baby, the best thing you can do is to supplement b. infantis, especially the robust strain from Evolve Biosystems[3]. The Hadza have more b. infantis[4] which kicks off a set of immune host interactions that have positive effects on inflammation during the critical period after birth[5].

"After around 3 years, the gut microbiota stabilises retaining relative proportions of taxa with adaptations to composition harder to impose,"[6] so I doubt it's diet as much as it is vertical transmission of the right kinds of bacteria that set the infants up for a lifetime of healthy immune response.

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5103657/

2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6177445/

3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7352178/

4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9894631/

5. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286742...

6. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6950569/

2 comments

I'm surprised you're downvoted, you liked 6 papers and are just stating that the link is tenuous, I think that's fair.
The parent opened their comment with a false claim. At no point did the article conflate gut diversity with gut health.
Also, never ever ever do they mention anything about human genetics. There are people who carry more hunter-gatherer traits than others. So who is this diet really for?

Genetics matter. I am a FUT2 non-secretor and this effects my gut health tremendously. I had IBD-D for years before I found this out. Before then if I took any pre or pro-biotics it was a nightmare, but that was supposed to be the healthy thing to do.

So sorry, but I do not listen to any nutritional research anymore that over generalizes a genetically diverse population.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ismej201464

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9866411/