Monthly Archives: April 2015

Literally, you can make your beer belly and you don’t even need to drink beer over decades. You can do it just for tonight. You can swallow yeast, the bakers/brewers yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and eat chips, your beer will be fermented in house, it would be personally artsy-crafted, healthiest, fresh-bio-beer you could ever have in your life.

Well, it was not so easy for Joe (Doe, no real name) for long time until they found out what was going on with his frequent, strange, drunken behavior. His wife was looking for hidden bottles, suspecting him to be a closet alcoholic. Finally, he went to the hospital and his gut meta-genome got sequenced. They found out that Joe suffered from auto-brewery syndrome, his stomach harbored 400% more yeast than normal people’s stomach do.

Generally, the diseases we know as cancer, diabetes, cardio-vascular, autoimmune and mental diseases might represent only the small pictures in our broken health. We suspect that the picture is bigger, more like when the balance of our body falls, our health falls, as well. But why would the “balance” fall? Just because we have a sedentary life style with lots of cheeseburger from fast serving restaurants and chips munching on TV bound sofa? Is that enough? But what if the “balance” of the commensal nature of our body falls.

Normally, we have bacteria, yeast and other microbial cells in our body, even “parasites”. Scientifically, it is proven that the total number of these microbial cells is more than the number of human cells. Well, here I am not going to argue whether we are in fact a multi cellular micro-organism or a complex one-unit human body, but I would say we are certainly a meta-biome, we are certainly a gaia-organism that is governed by our brain. The total mass of micro-organisms make up only about 2% of our body, even if they outnumber our human cells, because microbial cells are 10-20 times smaller than human cells, in general. Microbial cells are less diverse in our body, represent only about a few thousands distinct types, not comparable to the human cellular diversity that carries all the characteristics of human cellular biology.

So, what are these microbial cells doing with us, together? We have a commensal life with them that benefits for all. We feed them and they help us maintain our healthy balance. Sporadically, we do know for long time, if we take antibiotics, we need to eat yogurt, so we will not have stomach ache, I remember this from my childhood, like 50 years ago. If you are in the nutrition-supplement business, you can’t even open your store if you have no probiotic products containing Lactobacillus acidophilus. We know that Candida albicans live in my mouth and to question a two-sided, nasty yeast infection is not about how they got there, but what the problem could be with my immune system, why my un-balanced body let her overgrow.

In a disease related context, we also know from recent advancement of meta-genomic science that our microbes regulate the population and density of intestinal immune cells, and if something goes wrong in this process it could lead to ulcerative colitis, a type of inflammatory bowel disease. Scientific research discovered that microbiota imbalance would lead to other serious diseases, to complex metabolic disorders, to diabetes, to all kind of autoimmune diseases and to Parkinson’s disease. Recent study showed in a mouse exploratory model, that bacterial metabolic products would pass the blood-brain barrier and influence the behavior of mice, in experimental settings.

I love to bake home made pastry and I love to drink beer in microbrewery. I love the smell of the bakers/brewers yeast. I am already planning my next experiment calculating the minimal dose of yeast cells to swallow and feed them in my stomach with the right amount of carbohydrate food, Italian bread, my favorite, to brew three units of the best beer I ever have in my life, in my belly.

If you are interested more in your commensal life, listen to this video clip, but viewer discretion advised, Greg Foot from BritLab has a heavy British accent: why you are more bug than human!

Tibor Gyuris

Personal Genomics Blogger

“Knowledge is always good and certainly always better than ignorance”–Sergey Brin

“Possideo genes ergo sum”—Anonymous Roman Philosopher

Surprising study came out the other day in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology (Ref-1). You are fat, I mean obese, you get hugely reduced risk of developing Alzheimer Disease. The authors followed up 2 million people for over 20 years, simple recording their BMI and the date of onset of dementia if that happened. Out of the 2 million, 45 thousand people developed dementia during this time. Underweight people had a 34% higher chance to get into the Alzheimer Disease group. From lean to obese, the risk of developing dementia gradually decreased. When the doctors analyzed the obese group, BMI above 40, they found that the chance of getting demented got reduced by another 29% compared to the average not skinny and neither obese group of people.

Alzheimer Disease, yeah well, next generation sequencing is my baby and that is growing into numerous medical applications. In my personal opinion the most anticipated breakthrough would be happening in cancer research, but I accept any argument what any other scientific and medical field including dementia are revolutionized by the sophisticated sequencing machines. Just think about the ABCA7 (Ref-2) gene. There is a brand new discovery that suggests this gene to be associated with the development of Alzheimer Disease. This ABCA7 discovery came from the shear force massive genomic sequencing and microarray genotyping of 100 thousand people in Iceland.

What do I say about this Lancet study? Is fat some kind of protecting factor from dementia? We do know about several genes that play a role in Alzheimer Disease development and naturally, we have to look at the environmental factors as well, like being active, especially in social context, having responsibility, never stop working and finishing your day with a crossword puzzle. Common wisdom regarding environmental factors is that the major villains are attacking from sedentary life style and obesity and putting you in the group of developing the so called “sitting diseases” including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, reproductive deficiencies, cancer and dementia.

So why does obesity lower your risk of dementia? We don’t know. This new discovery does not fit into the previously predicted list of risk or protective factors of dementia. What we know about the molecular mechanism of dementia is that the aberrantly folding beta amyloid protein leads to aggregation and plaque formation in the brain. There are different types of approaches how to treat Alzheimer Disease like braking up the aggregated, harmful Alzheimer plaque structure or even better, try to prevent the formation of the Alzheimer plaques. There is one clinical trial that does not attempt to cure it, not even tries to treat it, just wants simple to delay the onset of Alzheimer Disease. So now, based on this Lancet study, I tell you, do it yourself at home: get fat. Really, just relax, indulge into your wildest eating adventure, if you don’t like physical exercise, just sit on the sofa. You would greatly reduce your risk of getting demented and most reasonable you would die sooner from cardiovascular diseases, diabetes or cancer.

The good news is that we also have serious choices in our life. Yes, I am still strongly advocating of your genetic testing to find out what possible known genetic risks you might have that would be associated with the development of certain diseases, consult with your doctor and learn what kind of lifestyle changes you could make to reduce the potential manifestation of your genetic bad luck. Besides eating whole nutritious food, you would still stick to other aspects of healthy lifestyle, like going to the Fruit Street or learning the Latin language at old age, but hey, if you already put up some pounds, don’t worry about loosing them. Enjoy the moment of life and have sex even if you are in the nursing home for elderly. And continue eating well.

Ref-1: BMI and risk of dementia in two million people over two decades: a retrospective cohort study; Nawab Quizilbash et al.; The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, Published Online: 09 April 2015

Ref-2: Loss-of-function variants in ABCA7 confer risk of Alzheimer’s disease; Stacy Steinberg et.al.; Nature Genetics, Published Online 25 March 2015

Tibor Gyuris

Personal Genomics Blogger

“Knowledge is always good and certainly always better than ignorance”–Sergey Brin

“Possideo genes ergo sum”—Anonymous Roman Philosopher

This picture is created that it can be seen either way. It is an illusion -visually- but it reflects the relative realty of life, certainly the relative perception of life. I saw the cat going down, but in the next fraction of the second I saw the cat going up. For me it is both way in the same time.

This picture was created in 1915 by the cartoonist W.E. Hill. Yeah, I married my young wife in 1974, but I knew it was a package deal, she came together with my mother in law. Like the cat, up and down, young and old in the same time.

But the dress, I don’t get it. It is blue and black.

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