Microbiome in the brain?

Not sure what to make of the idea, but since we're often speaking about how the microbiome interacts with our immune systems, and how current research only scratches the surface.. thought I'd share:

"In contrast to the gut microbiome, it is less clear the degree to which microorganisms actually inhabit our tissues and organs, and whether this might also influence our physiology. This relative ignorance results largely because it is much easier to obtain fecal samples than tissue biopsies, particularly of the central nervous system. However, in the course of our analysis of human brain transcriptome data, we have noted a surprisingly high level of microbial sequences, which appear to differ in different brain regions. We are currently investigating the possibility that the microbial sequences we have identified are not simply due to contamination, but actually reflect resident microbes."

https://www.colorado.edu/lab/neurodegeneration/there-brain-microbiome

Oh ok. I will check out some of those papers. I saw your link to that site before.. must be interesting stuff.

yep - ever since they figured out PCR people have been using it to peer into places we had been told for decades were sterile - and lo and behold there are microbes there.

in the blood, in the human brain, in the eyeball.

turns out trees have fungus living in them all their lives (rather than getting in from the outside after they die) - ready to digest them

The nose, eye, ear canal, and sexual organs all have their own microbiomes - slightly disturbingly - but then entirely naturally - most of these are really a recognizable version of the person's own gut microbiome.

but some of the more advanced studies are finding microbial DNA in dense tissues such as muscles etc.

i think the technology involved in getting reliable counts in these mixed media with very large ratios of human tissue vs microbe, and biologically active compounds is challenging and not entirely ironed out as yet - but it does seem to be an inescapable fact that we are hosts for many organisms in pretty much all our tissues even in healthy people.

this ties back into some of our earlier discussions around what then is an infection - if everybody is "infected" at some level ...?
why do some people show symptoms and others none - with similar levels of microbial populations?
and ideas of tolerance or lack of it

the Virome is another area only now getting attention
it seems that typically there are many viruses for every bacteria in the human body and we are just beginning to scratch the surface in terms of what the hell these tiny molecular automatons are doing in the mix

some of the gut microbiome researchers are starting to dig into this area too - most of them are phages as i understand it

fascinating stuff - but not much of it actionable at present - i think we only have around 1/4 of the pieces of the puzzle or less

Girlie I don’t know about the vitamin D guy but the Marshal protocol if that’s what you were refuring to is a different mashal guy.

astroman said...
Girlie I don’t know about the vitamin D guy but the Marshal protocol if that’s what you were refuring to is a different mashal guy.

The Marshall Protocol is based on limiting sunlight/vit d and taking a med (Benicar)
You have to wear dark glasses outside and long sleeves.
it might not include minocycline as I first posted.

Sounds like a different Marshall

yep...my Correction: This Professor Trevor Marshall IS the "Marshall protocol / stop vitamin D guy". All over goggle. I remember dcd was mentioning him in another post.

(Hey music geeks: Oddly enough, his side gig was being a music electronics guru "back in the day" and worked with AC/DC, .......but he is not the Marshall from Marshall amps).

Funny thing is there is another Dr Marshall too who pops up in the lyme world..

Post Edited (astroman) : 3/18/2021 8:09:12 AM (GMT-6)

My thoughts on the microbiome are evolving.

We have discussed on here the chicken and egg conundrum. Does lyme/neurological disease alter the microbiome, or does a faulty microbiome cause neurological deficit? There are cases where the causality runs in one direction, and cases where it runs in the other.


My thinking now is that they are actually two sides of the same coin. The brain and gut really are “one”. There is cross talk. The brain controls the gut through the vagus nerve, and gut talks to the brain through various peptides and neurotransmitters. When either goes, so does the other.

The approach that I had been taking, thinking my gut is what blew first, is to try to fix the brain/neurological deficit by correcting the gut. It’s been helping, but it a long slog and you have to hope the autonomic nervous system repairs itself in the process such that you can get back into homeostasis.

You can take the opposite approach, however, and try to fix the autonomic nervous system and attack it from that angle. That will be my plan at Spero. I’ve made progress w diet/keto, I just can’t get to where I need to be, and something else is missing. My autonomics are still a mess, which prevents my gut from fully healing and the neuroinflammation from fully going away.

For anyone who doubts autonomic distress perpetuates chronic inflammation. I read about a study where a neurosurgeon in NY took rats and injected a neurotoxin into them which set off a chain reaction of inflammation. He then showed how he could turn off systemic inflammation by injecting an anti-inflammatory cocktail into the brain only. He then cut the vagus nerve and repeated the experiment, except this time the inflammation did not shut off. He then stimulated the vagus nerve electrically, and it did. Autonomics are a huge piece of the puzzle, because they control the gut, and the immune system.

This is not new. Everyone knows that de-stressing helps. Deep breathing, etc. But I guess I just didn’t realize how strong the causality is. This isn’t a 6-degrees-of-separation where “maybe if I’m less stressed I’ll have knock on effects that improve my well being”. No, the autonomic nervous system directly and very powerfully controls the immune system. And Spero has the technology and experience to directly help me alter my autonomics, something I’ve been unable to sufficiently do on my own thus far.

Post Edited (dcd2103) : 3/18/2021 1:32:14 PM (GMT-6)

Hi Dimitry - as you can imagine - i don't think he is fully criticizing his own work - but he mentions the protocol making people ill for "many years" in the paper at the top of the list on this page ( frontiers in pediatrics 2018 ) - and the tone is very much like the results are not what he hoped for. disappointment is my interpretation. possibly a bit strong.

https://www.trevormarshall.com/