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Of course there is a lung microbiome. From The Scientist:

Breathing Life into Lung Microbiome Research

Although it’s far less populated than the mouth community that helps feed it, researchers increasingly appreciate the role of the lung microbiome in respiratory health.

There’s a constant flow into [the] lungs of aspirated bacteria from the mouth,” he said. But through the action of cilia and the cough reflex, among other things, there’s also an outward flow of microbes, making the lung microbiome a dynamic community.

Like the placenta, urethra, and other sites of the body now known to harbor commensal bacteria, researchers and clinicians once considered the lung to be sterile in the absence of infection. Over the last 10 years, however, evidence has been building that, although it is far less-populated than the mouth or gut, the disease-free lung, too, is populated by a persistent community of bacteria. Shifts in the lung microbiome have been correlated with the development of chronic lung conditions like cystic fibrosis (CF) or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), although the relationship between the lung microbiome and disease is complicated.

The surface area of the healthy lung is a dynamic environment. The respiratory organ is constantly bombarded by debris and microbes that make their way from the mouth and nose through the trachea. Ciliated cells on branching bronchioles within the lungs beat rhythmically to move debris and invading microbes, while alveolar macrophages constantly patrol for and destroy unwelcome bugs.

The lung microbiome is about 1,000 times less dense than the oral microbiome and about 1 million to 1 billion times sparser than the microbial community of the gut, said Huffnagle. That is in part because the lung lacks the microbe-friendly mucosal lining found in the mouth and gastrointestinal tract, instead harboring a thin layer of much-less-inviting surfactant to keep the respiratory organs from drying out. ... It appears that the lung microbiome is populated from the oral microbiome, and among this population exists a small subset of bacteria that can survive the unique environment of the lung. The most common bacteria found in healthy lungs are Streptococcus, Prevotella, and Veillonella species.

Segal, who studies small airway disorders with an eye toward early detection of COPD, has found in a series of studies that inflammation of the lungs is often accompanied by a shift in their bacterial makeup. The mechanism behind these changes and consequences of them are still not well understood, however. Other studies have uncovered associations between changes in the lung microbiome and HIV or asthma, but again, causality has been difficult to elucidate.

According to Yvonne Huang  from the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, who is working to characterize lung microbiomes in relation to health and disease progression, “this field is where studies of gut microbiome were 10 to 15 years ago. 

  Human lungs. Credit: Wikipedia

Sad, but not surprising results. It highlights the damage repeated courses of antibiotics, and even illness, do to gut microbial communities. The researchers write that during a prolonged stay in ICU they found the emergence of "ultra-low-density communities" (only 1 to 4 bacteria species) in patients. From Science Daily:

Critically ill ICU patients lose almost all of their gut microbes and the ones left aren't good

Researchers at the University of Chicago have shown that after a long stay in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) only a handful of pathogenic microbe species remain behind in patients' intestines. The team tested these remaining pathogens and discovered that some can become deadly when provoked by conditions that mimic the body's stress response to illness.

"Our hypothesis has always been that the gut microflora in these patients are very abnormal, and these could be the culprits that lead to sepsis," he says. The current study supports this idea. Alverdy and Olga Zaborina, a microbiologist, wanted to know what happens to the gut microbes of ICU patients, who receive repeated courses of multiple antibiotics to ward off infections.

They found that patients with stays longer than a month had only one to four types of microbes in their gut, as measured from fecal samples -- compared to about 40 different types found in healthy volunteers.

Four of these patients had gut microbe communities with just two members-- an infectious Candida yeast strain and a pathogenic bacterial strain, such as Enterococcus faecium or Staphylococcus aureus and other bugs associated with hospital-associated infections. Not surprisingly, almost all of the pathogenic bacteria in these patients were antibiotic resistant.

More research on the benefits of exercise. From Medical Xpress:

An hour of moderate exercise a day may decrease heart failure risk

In a new study reported in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Heart Failure, researchers say more than an hour of moderate or half an hour of vigorous exercise per day may lower your risk of heart failure by 46 percent. Heart failure is a common, disabling disease that accounts for about 2 percent of total healthcare costs in industrialized countries. Risk of death within five years of diagnosis is 30 percent to 50 percent, researchers said.

Swedish researchers studied 39,805 people 20-90 years old who didn't have heart failure when the study began in 1997. Researchers assessed their total- and leisure time activity at the beginning of the study and followed them to see how this was related to their subsequent risk of developing heart failure. They found that the more active a person, the lower their risk for heart failure. 

From Medical Xpress:

Workers who exercise lower health risks, cost less

Get moving: just 20 minutes of exercise a day dramatically lowers the risk of diabetes and heart disease, even for employees with a high risk of developing those conditions.

A University of Michigan study looked at the impact of exercise on 4,345 employees in a financial services company that had just started a workplace wellness program. Roughly 30 percent of employees were high risk and suffering from metabolic syndrome, a dangerous cluster of risk factors associated with diabetes and heart disease. Overall, about 34 percent of U.S. adults have metabolic syndrome.

The study found that when the high-risk employees accumulated the government-recommended 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise a week, their health care costs and productivity equaled that of healthy employees who didn't exercise enough, said Alyssa Schultz, a researcher at the Health Management Research Center in the U-M School of Kinesiology.

"It was a real surprise, the level of protection physical activity gave to people with metabolic syndrome," Schultz said. 

Research done in mice, but may apply to humans. From Science Daily:

How physical exercise protects the brain from stress-induced depression

Physical exercise has many beneficial effects on human health, including the protection from stress-induced depression. However, until now the mechanisms that mediate this protective effect have been unknown. In a new study in mice, researchers show that exercise training induces changes in skeletal muscle that can purge the blood of a substance that accumulates during stress, and is harmful to the brain.

"In neurobiological terms, we actually still don't know what depression is. Our study represents another piece in the puzzle, since we provide an explanation for the protective biochemical changes induced by physical exercise that prevent the brain from being damaged during stress," says Mia Lindskog, researcher at the Department of Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet.

 

Two related stories that look at children, exercise, and academic performance. Boys, in general, have higher activity levels than girls, and they need exercise and recess to be able to get through the rest of the school day. Sitting quietly in class and doing classwork is hard when one has lots of excess energy. In fact, sitting still for hours on end is NOT healthy in any way for anyone! Fidget, fidget, fidget... From Science Daily:

High levels of physical activity linked to better academic performance in boys

Higher levels of physical activity are related to better academic achievement during the first three school years, particularly in boys, research shows. For instance, boys with higher levels of physical activity, and especially walking and bicycling to and from school, had better reading skills than less active boys....The findings of the present study highlight the potential of physical activity during recess and participation in organized sports in the improvement of academic achievement in children

 Instead of medicine, why aren't doctors prescibing exercise? From The Atlantic:

Exercise Is ADHD Medication

Physical movement improves mental focus, memory, and cognitive flexibility; new research shows just how critical it is to academic performance.

...More insipid but also more clearly critical to addressing what's being called the ADHD epidemic is plain old physical activity.

This morning the medical journal Pediatrics published research that found kids who took part in a regular physical activity program showed important enhancement of cognitive performance and brain function. The findings, according to University of Illinois professor Charles Hillman and colleagues, "demonstrate a causal effect of a physical program on executive control, and provide support for physical activity for improving childhood cognition and brain health." If it seems odd that this is something that still needs support, that's because it is odd, yes. Physical activity is clearly a high, high-yield investment for all kids, but especially those attentive or hyperactive. This brand of research is still published and written about as though it were a novel finding, in part because exercise programs for kids remain underfunded and underprioritized in many school curricula, even though exercise is clearly integral to maximizing the utility of time spent in class.

Earlier this month, another study found that a 12-week exercise program improved math and reading test scores in all kids, but especially in those with signs of ADHD.

Last year a very similar study in the Journal of Attention Disorders found that just 26 minutes of daily physical activity for eight weeks significantly allayed ADHD symptoms in grade-school kids. The modest conclusion of the study was that "physical activity shows promise for addressing ADHD symptoms in young children." 

"If physical activity is established as an effective intervention for ADHD," they continued, "it will also be important to address possible complementary effects of physical activity and existing treatment strategies ..." Which is a kind of phenomenal degree of reservation compared to the haste with which millions of kids have been introduced to amphetamines and other stimulants to address said ADHD. The number of prescriptions increased from 34.8 to 48.4 million between 2007 and 2011 alone. The pharmaceutical market around the disorder has grown to several billion dollars in recent years while school exercise initiatives have enjoyed no such spoils of entrepreneurialism. 

Over all, the pandemic of physical inactivity, as Hillman and colleagues put it in their Pediatrics journal article today, is "a serious threat to global health" responsible for around 10 percent of premature deaths from noncommincable diseases. 

John Ratey, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard, suggests that people think of exercise as medication for ADHD. Even very light physical activity improves mood and cognitive performance by triggering the brain to release dopamine and serotonin, similar to the way that stimulant medications like Adderall do

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[PLEASE NOTE THAT AN UPDATED VERSION OF THIS POST WITH NEW INFORMATION, INCLUDING NEW PRODUCTS, WAS PUBLISHED IN MAY 2018: The One Probiotic That Treats SinusitisComments can be posted there.]

We now know that antibiotics, especially repeated courses of antibiotics, kills off bacteria and alters the microbial community in the sinuses (sinus biome). Research by Abreu et al (in 2012) showed that it is Lactobacillus sakei that is missing in chronic sinusitis sufferers, and that Lactobacillus sakei successfully treats sinusitis. From this research it is clear that Lactobacillus sakei is a  beneficial bacteria that can be used as a probiotic to cure sinustis.

It turns out that many brands of live fermented kimchi contain Lactobacillus sakei, and this is what my family used to treat and cure ourselves of chronic sinusitis (and acute sinusitis). So yes, kimchi can be probiotics for sinusitis. It is now over 85 weeks since I've been off all antibiotics and feeling great!

Until now I avoided naming the kimchi brand we used on this site because I believe that many brands of fermented kimchi (with cabbage) contain Lactobacillus sakei, and should be effective in curing sinusitis (this is by dabbing or smearing it in the nostrils - see Sinusitis Treatment Summary link for the METHOD and details).

WHAT BRANDS OR PRODUCTS WITH Lactobacillus sakei WORK?

The brand I use is Sunja's Kimchi (from Vermont). We originally were successful with the Medium Spicy Cabbage Kimchi and when that stopped being fully effective last winter (from overuse? recipe change?), we switched to Sunja's Medium Spicy Cucumber Kimchi (fermented at least 14 days and the jar opened less than 1 week).

Recently I heard from a woman in Nevada who wrote me stating that smearing/dabbing Sinto Gourmet Mild White Napa Cabbage Kimchi into her nostrils was successfully treating her chronic sinusitis (using the method described in the Sinusitis Treatment page)

One person wrote that he successfully cured chronic and acute sinusitis with a fermented sausage starter from Chr. Hansen containing L. sakei and another bacteria. He used it after mixing very small amounts in his  Neti pot - initially used it 1 x per day until cured, and then sparingly only as needed (after a cold) or as a maintenance booster once every 3 or 4 months (see his comment in the Contact page for more details). (UPDATE: one name for this product is Bactoferm F-RM-52, which contains Lactobacillus sakei and Staphylococcus carnosus  . See 1/12/15 post for more, including my experience with it.)

Eating kimchi does not seem to treat sinusitis, even though it may be good for the gut. Only smearing or dabbing it in the nostrils works.

Several people have reported that using sauerkraut has not helped their sinusitis, and scientific studies report that sauerkraut contains minimal L.sakei, if at all.

Others have also mentioned thinking about using lactic acid starter cultures containing L. sakei , whether using it alone or making kimchi with it, but I don't know how it went.

Finally, I would like feedback from you: 1) What brands of kimchi have worked for you in treating or curing sinusitis?     2) What other products containing Lactobacillus sakei have worked successfully for you? And how did you use it?   3) What other bacteria have worked for you in curing sinusitis?

Please let me know by commenting in the comments section or writing me an email. This way I can update this list.  The goal is to find ways to improve the beneficial bacteria in the sinuses and so treat, cure, and eventually prevent sinusitis.   Thanks!

[PLEASE NOTE THAT AN UPDATED VERSION OF THIS POST WITH NEW INFORMATION WAS PUBLISHED IN MAY 2018: The One Probiotic That Treats SinusitisComments can be posted there.]

Once again, research finds that eating highly processed foods is not the best, this time for cognitive performance of 17 year olds. From Medical Xpress:

Western diet leads to poorer performance

Higher intake of a western diet by 14-year-olds has been linked with diminished cognitive performance at age 17.

Researchers found that participants with a western dietary pattern—characterised by high intakes of takeaway food, red and processed meat, soft drink, fried and refined food—scored lower in cognitive tasks, particularly those involving reaction time/psychomotor function, visual attention, learning and memory.

Chips and crisps came in for a particular drubbing: their high consumption was significantly associated with longer reaction times on detection tasks. In contrast to their peers, study participants with a high intake of fruits and leafy vegetables had better cognitive performance, which lead researcher Dr Anett Nyaradi says could be due to increased micronutrient content. This includes folate from leafy green vegetables, which previous research has linked to enhanced cognitive development.

Led by UWA and the Telethon Kids Institute, the study involved 602 members of the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study....Dr Nyaradi says several factors may be at play in this diet-related decline in cognitive skills, including the level of omega-6 fatty acids in fried foods and red meat.

Metabolic pathways function best with a balanced 1:1 ratio of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, but the western diet can shift this to a 1:20 or 1:25 ratio.High intake of saturated fat and simple carbohydrates has been linked to impairment in the functioning of the hippocampus, a brain structure centrally involved in learning and memory that increases its volume during adolescence, Dr Nyaradi says.

"Adolescence represents a critical time period for brain development. It is possible that poor diet is a significant risk factor during this period…indeed, our findings support this proposition."

This research involved 14,000 male and female participants in England, aged 16 or over. From Science Daily:

Fruit and vegetable consumption could be as good for your mental as your physical health

Fruit and vegetable consumption could be as good for your mental as your physical health, new research suggests. The research, conducted by the University of Warwick's Medical School using data from the Health Survey for England, and published by BMJ Open focused on mental wellbeing and found that high and low mental wellbeing were consistently associated with an individual's fruit and vegetable consumption.

33.5% of respondents with high mental wellbeing ate five or more portions of fruit and vegetables a day, compared with only 6.8% who ate less than one portion. Commenting on the findings Dr Saverio Stranges, the research paper's lead author, said: "The data suggest that higher an individual's fruit and vegetable intake the lower the chance of their having low mental wellbeing." 31.4% of those with high mental wellbeing ate three-four portions and 28.4% ate one-two.

Low mental wellbeing is strongly linked to mental illness and mental health problems, but high mental wellbeing is more than the absence of symptoms or illness; it is a state in which people feel good and function well. Optimism, happiness, self-esteem, resilience and good relationships with others are all part of this state. Mental wellbeing is important not just to protect people from mental illness but because it protects people against common and serious physical diseases.

"Our findings add to the mounting evidence that fruit and vegetable intake could be one such factor and mean that people are likely to be able to enhance their mental wellbeing at the same time as preventing heart disease and cancer."

From Science Daily:

Don’t drink the (warm) water, study says

But a scientist warns Americans not to drink water from plastic bottles if it's been sitting in a warm environment for a long time. A research team examined 16 bottled water brands at 158 degrees for four weeks. The study found that as bottles warmed over the four-week period, antimony and BPA levels increased.

Plastic water bottles are made from polyethylene terephthalate. When heated, the material releases the chemicals antimony and bisphenol A, commonly called BPA.

While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said BPA is not a major concern at low levels found in beverage containers, it continues to study the chemical’s impacts. Some health officials, including those at the Mayo Clinic, say the chemical can cause negative effects on children’s health.And antimony is considered a carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization.

Of the 16 brands, only one exceeded the EPA standard for antimony and BPA....Based on the study, storage at warm temperatures would seem to not be a big problem, Ma said. Ma’s study found that as bottles warmed over the four-week period, antimony and BPA levels increased.The UF scientist warned against leaving bottled water in a hot garage for weeks on end or in your car all day during the summer....Drinking that water occasionally won’t be dangerous, but doing so regularly could cause health issues, she said.

I mentioned these studies earlier in July, but this write-up (from Sept. 17, 2014) gives the reader some new information. From Gut Microbiota Watch:

Studies uncover 500 “hidden” microbes in the gut

Over the last few years, scientists have found that the microbes hosted in the digestive tract (the gut microbiota or gut flora) perform key functions for health. Digestion, immunity and even mental health are extremely dependent on tasks carried out by the gut bacteria.

Now, two studies have found that the human gut hosts five hundred species of microbes – and seven million microbial genes – that were unknown until now. The proportion of the gut flora that had been hidden until now may hold essential information on the origin of a range of diseases (IBD and metabolic syndrome, among others), as well as the clues on how to cure them.

The two studies were published in Nature Biotechnology in July, and come from the efforts of the MetaHIT(METAgenomics of the Human Intestinal Tract) project, a European consortium working to explore the composition of human gut microbiota.

The first of the two studies focuses on expanding the catalogue of genes that belong to microbes of the gut flora....As a result, the catalogue has increased to 10 million genes. The next step for the scientists is to find what these genes do, in order to have a better understanding of the functions performed by the microbiota.

The second of the two studies pursues an even more ambitious goal: identifying new organisms in the microbiota, rather than identifying new genes....By applying this method, the authors have found 500 species whose existence in the microbiota was previously unknown.

Interestingly, some of the subjects analysed in the study had very few of these new species. By checking who these individuals were, the authors found that they all had Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, or metabolic syndrome with an inflammatory component. These findings suggest that there is a correlation between suffering from these diseases and having less diversity in these unknown species. “These species, unknown until now, will possibly make the difference between healthy and unhealthy people”, said Guarner.

This information may open the door to new strategies aimed at recovering the presence of these species through nutritional intervention. In particular, providing patients with probiotics or prebiotics,  that may help to balance their microbiota.

Well DUH ! Of course children need to run, run, run or somehow exercise to get rid of excess energy. That's why recess is so important (but unfortunately so many schools are eliminating it). It is incredibly hard for children to quietly sit for many, many hours straight like little robots working tirelessly on schoolwork, especially those with high energy levels to start with. From Medscape:

Before-School Exercise May Reduce ADHD Symptoms

Moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise in the morning may reduce symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in young children at risk for the illness, new research suggests.

A randomized study of 202 kindergarteners, 1st graders, and 2nd graders showed that those who completed 12 weeks of before-school physical activity had significantly higher reductions in inattention and moodiness than those who completed a sedentary classroom-based intervention.In addition, the subgroup of children with elevated ADHD symptoms who went through the before-school exercise program showed reduced impairment associated with ADHD risk in both their school and home settings.

"We need more studies to replicate the results, but I think the take-home message is that aerobic exercise is a health-producing activity ― and there are really no negative side effects from it," added Dr. Hoza.

Past research has shown some positive effects from exercise on patients with ADHD, providing evidence that it may be "a viable strategy for improving symptoms, behavior, achievement, inhibitory control, and neurocognitive function in youth with elevated ADHD symptoms," write the investigators.

In the current study, the researchers enrolled 94 children at risk for ADHD and 108 children deemed "typically developing" to act as their control group....The physical activity involved continuous movement requiring children to breathe hard and included a variety of age-appropriate activities and games.

"Although our findings indicated that all participants showed improvements, children with ADHD risk receiving exercise benefited across a broader range of outcomes than those receiving the sedentary activities," said coinvestigator Alan Smith, PhD, chair of the Department of Kinesiology at Michigan State University in East Lansing, in a release.