Bacteriocins: Key to surviving the era of antibiotics?

[00:00:00]I'd like to talk about a topic of increasing importance in the age of antibiotics.

[00:00:06]That is ever since the first antibiotic penicellin was discovered in 1928. Of course you all know there's been a huge proliferation of other antibiotics.

[00:00:16]Dozens if not hundreds of other antibiotics that have emerged. Some of which have been successful, some of which not. And there's been wild overuse as you know of antibiotics. For instance, the CDC estimates that about a third of all antibiotics prescribed are really inappropriate, not necessary. And I think that's probably an underestimation. It's probably worse than that. We also know that by on average by age 40, most people have taken 30 courses of antibiotics. It only takes one course of antibiotics to wipe out literally hundreds of species in your gastrointestinal microbiome as well as the microbiomes of other body locations such as mouth, skin, vagina, prostate, urinary bladder, etc. In other words, our wild overexposure to antibiotics has changed in an adverse in a negative way the composition of microbes in all those body locations. So there's no question there there's a time and place for antibiotics. If you had numaccoal pneumonia and you you're going to develop sepsis and get very very sick, you need an antibiotic. If you have a wound, an open laceration or you had a car accident and there's a you have a wound that could get infected, you need an antibiotic. There's no question there's a time and place for it. And in some instances, they are lifesaving.

[00:01:40]But the problem is the overuse of antibiotics, the repeated administration of antibiotics takes its toll. So there's been a price to pay. Yes, it may save you from some life-threatening infection, but it will take a toll on your health long term. Now, here's the crazy thing that you might not recognize it as a complication or consequence of prior antibiotic exposure. You might not recognize that weight gain, especially in the abdomen, was due to the antibiotics you took many years ago. Or the cognitive impairment and dementia, Alzheimer's dementia, may be a result of antibiotics you took. Or it could be the irritital bowel syndrome or ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease or it could be the type 2 diabetes or the rosacea or psoriasis or the fibromyalgia or sleep apnnea. Name your modern condition. More often than not, a role was played by the disruption of the gastrointestinal microbiome and other microbiomes by antibiotics. You know, even today, 650,000 prescriptions are written every day, every day for an antibiotic. And so, there's been a massive disruption of the entire body's microbiome. Well, I want to talk to you about something specific about that issue and that is the loss of species that produce what are called bacteriains.

[00:03:05]Bacteriains are natural antibiotics. So many not all but many microbes that were resident in your gastrointestinal tract and elsewhere were producers of these so-called bacteriains. And all they are are small molecule peptide antibiotics. So they're natural antibiotics. Now these bacteriains because they are the product of thousands if if not millions of years of evolution have come to evolve and they're effective in killing pathogenic species. So species that are disruptive to you. And these are mostly not entitlement mostly gram negative proteobacteria.

[00:03:49]So these are essentially fecal microbes.

[00:03:51]There's also some gram positive species like staflacccus orius but it really helps to narrow this down to the gram negative proteacteria that is the gram negative species of stool of fecal material. And these might be familiar to you ecoli salmonella seratia sudamonus many others because these are the producers by the way of endotoxin lipopolysaccharide endotoxin. That's the compound in the cell walls of these gram negative proteobacteria that are released upon the microbes death that then gets into your bloodstream. That's how gastrointestyl microbes in this class of gram negative proteacteria can have effects on the brain, skin, vagina, prostate, all the organs of the body. In other words, it's that that's how they export their effects throughout the entire body. So you don't think of right, you don't think of fibromyalgia or eczema or rosaceia or depression or anxiety as being the consequence of a disrupted gastrointestinal microbiome.

[00:05:04]But they are and much of it mediated there's some other effects also but much of it mediated by this bloodborne phenomenon called endotoxmia.

[00:05:14]Well, when we're exposed to antibiotics, we lose many species. Hundred, literally hundreds of species, many of which were producing these bacteriains.

[00:05:25]Well, once we appreciate this, we can start to put that insight into use. That is, we can start to restore microbes that produce bacteriains.

[00:05:35]That, by the way, is the basis for my SIBO yogurt formulation. So-called because it's useful for SIBO. So you may recall if you've been following my conversations that my SIBO yogurt recipe includes three microbes lactobacillus gaster, lactobacillus rotary and bacillus subtilus. Three microbes chosen because they colonize the small intestine where SIBO occurs. small intestinal bacterial overgrowth as well as the colon and produce bacteriains that is natural antibiotics effective in killing the species of SIBO all those E.coli coli sudamonus seratia it's as well as by the way the grand positive staploxurorius streptoakal species andorakal species and so that's the rationale for the sibo yogurt of course we use prolonged fermentation as a way to increase bacterial numbers if you don't know what I'm talking about just look up sibo yogurt in this YouTube channel in my blog the hundreds of blog posts by williamdaves.com and if you need some assistance join my conversations in my membership website which is inner circle.davesinfinitealth.com deer davesinfinitealth.com but I try to make this very available including in my book my super gut book though the recipe in the book in the super gut book has been updated I replace the original basillus coagulants with basillus subtilus there's nothing wrong with basillus coagulants it's very interesting microbe but it's just not real reliable for fermentation in a dairy vehicle we get low numbers and so I replaced it with basillus much more reliable for dairy fermentation and that prolonged fermentation boosts counts of microbes to the hundreds of billions, hundreds of billions per half cup or 120 millilit serving. Now, the original recipe called for co- fermentation of all three together. As time has gone on, and while this works for so many people, some people have SIBO so bad, they need every advantage. And so I've encouraged people more recently to uh ferment each of those species uh independently separately to get the highest counts possible and then consume a little bit of each one every day for a minimum of four weeks and probably intermittently for the rest of their lives until we figure out a way to make those microbes take up residence permanently. That we don't know how to do just yet. But back to this idea of bacteriains. So we want microbes that produce bacteriains. Not all microbes do that. Of all the microbes that could inhabit your gastrointestinal tract, only a fraction are known to produce bacteriains. There are several species in fermented foods.

[00:08:23]Fermented foods like kombucha, kafir, sauerkraut, fermented veggies. And by the way, if you follow my conversation, you now know that commercial kafir shouldn't really be called kafir. There are three very important components in traditional kafir. That is kafir that was uh passed down from generation to generation over many years typically in uh Eastern Europe or Asia. Those those kinds of traditional kafir have in addition to many bacterial species they also have acettobactor species that produce acetic acid. They also have fungal species such as sacroyces species or cloveromyces species. They also have a very very important lactobacillus species probably the thing that is responsible for the bulk of benefits from traditional kafir and that's this microbe lactobacillus kafir and opacans none of this is present in commercial in modern commercial kafir so if you follow my conversations I show you how to recreate traditional kafir unless you have an aunt or uncle say in Latvia or Bulgaria who can send you some barring that I show you how to recreate all the missing pieces in traditional kafir. And among those microbes, among the effects of getting this kafir and other fermented foods is a restoration of species that produce bacteriains.

[00:09:49]Species like lacticus lactis or lactobus plantarum or weiselis species or real champion pediacus species like pediacus pentacatas or pediacus acidylacticide.

[00:10:03]Those are you don't have to remember those names. Just know that these are species that occur in fermented foods.

[00:10:08]And interestingly, most of the time those microbes don't take up residence.

[00:10:13]Some do, but most do not. That is, the microbes in fermented foods typically don't take up residence in your gastrointestinal tract. Well, what good are they? There's probably a lot of reasons why they're good for you, but one of the reasons is some of the species in fermented foods, especially traditional kafir, produce bacteriains.

[00:10:34]So bacteriains, think of them as being smarter than conventional pharmaceutical antibiotics. Conventional pharmaceutical antibiotics tend to be indiscriminate.

[00:10:45]They kill pathogens, bad things like E.coli in a urinary tract infection.

[00:10:51]They also kill off numerous beneficial species including many species that were previously producing bacteriains for you to protect you. And so you've lost those microbes. And so that's why one of the reasons why fermented foods are so powerful. And it may be it's the loss of bacteriains that is the problem when you take an antibiotic. And it may be the advantage of fermented foods that you're storing species that do produce bacteriains and are smarter, more selective than pharmaceutical antibiotics because it's taken millions of years of evolution in mamalian body or mammals of course in the mamalian body for these microbes to acquire the ability to produce bacteras that don't harm other microbes that they cooperate with. I mean, you don't want Lactobacillus rotary, for instance, producing a bacteriain that kills Lactobacillus gaster. That'd be silly.

[00:11:50]So, thankfully, these microbes have evolved, including evolution of their bacteriains. So, they don't kill off other beneficial species, but they do kill off those undesirable species, especially gram negative proteacteria.

[00:12:08]And so, this is part of what we're doing. We're trying to restore your gastrointestinal microbiome's capacity to restore the production of bacteriains. We do that, of course, you can do it with a SIBO yogurt. Go further by consuming lots and lots of fermented foods, including I hope trying to recreate traditional kafir, not the stuff in the store. You can use the stuff in the store as a starting place, but then you're going to add back some of the missing pieces. You're going to add back acettobactor which by the way the presence of accetobactor that produces acetate or acetic acid amplifies the production of bacterasins as well as that lactobacus kafir noacions and fungal species. By the way you'll know you have traditional kafir when you get those so-called grains those little cauliflower like growths that fall to the bottom that you can use to propagate make future batches of kafir. But anyway, those are the key pieces. We're going to get smarter over time on how to purposefully take advantage of bacteriains to regain control over what has become now across the country a microbiome gone bad.