An overview of how viral infections can readily lead to dysbiosis of the microbiome, and how the end result of bacterial co-infections may not be too uncommon.
Excellent article! I’m going to send it to my GP. Definitely not enough thought to this axis in the body. Meanwhile, I’m still taking my liposomal glutathione pills :) Thank you for everything Modern Discontent!
I'll be very honest and say that I sort of lost confidence while writing this article, as many of the articles cited don't provide direct arguments to secondary bacterial infection, and more so cites a lot of observational data, so the actual mechanisms weren't exactly clear.
And so it sort of came down to "microbiome important for protection, infection damages microbiome, therefore another infection may happen".
It's something that can be seen as a bit too simplistic, and it also raises the question as to how people get infected if the microbiome is intended to protect them in the first place.
So it raises a lot of questions, but I released it even with these thoughts in mind as it sort of becomes a headache to try to check for every little thing.
I think there are so many variables- I commend you trying to link them all. I definitely think the links you made seem very valid and largely unexplored. Hyper-inflammatory responses are definitely leading to weird outcomes- and we are only beginning to understand the immune response to viruses- IgG1 through 4 are just the tip of the iceberg. I love your analysis of the supplements to this degree, because as a neophyte it’s so difficult to navigate what supplements can actually help!
When researching these topics you don't know what's out there, so I generally start with searching up words or phrases and open up all of the studies possible. Then I skim through them and see what content each paper has, and look through a few citations if they seem interesting, then you sort of see how you can put the information together.
So I usually say I cite maybe half (and sometimes fewer than half) of the actual papers I look through, so I hope people understand the amount of work many people put into when they sift through studies.
I do enjoy covering supplements and pharmaceuticals, because I'm always interested in looking at the pathways or mechanisms of these things. Far too many people are interested in what something treats, or what's happening, rather than examining how this could happen.
It's the underlying mechanisms that helps you learn how to think by piecing information together, rather than what to think that just tells you this is what is going on.
When I caught omicron, I barely had any sign of illness but I had a couple weeks of gut difficulty. You brought up a lot of good possibilities as to why that is. I try to make homemade sauerkraut regularly, and I feel so much better when I eat it every day.
I was actually going to include a post about gut-virus or not gut-virus, but that just went down it's own tangent.
Some evidence suggests that infectious virus can be found in the gut, while others use proxy measures such as PCR and antigen assays to make this assumption. Many of the initial findings used PCR and then said the virus can be found there, hence the US officials being probed for viruses in China.
So some evidence suggests this may be the case, and the virus may target the ACE-II receptors of the gut epithelial. HOWEVER, there's a lot of other factors to consider in making that argument as well.
In any case, eating probiotic-rich foods is probably a good deal regardless!
It seems like it would be harder for a virus to attack receptors in the gut because our immune system hopefully has fought an infection enough in the body before it reaches the gut. And I've heard people talk about a human virome as well as a biome. Which makes me think of your point about possibly activating a virus that's already present in the gut, or maybe even changing the viral balance. I've heard theories about the Epstein-Barr virus, that it lives in an inactivated form in many areas the body, then certain conditions activate it. Interesting stuff!
Excellent article! I’m going to send it to my GP. Definitely not enough thought to this axis in the body. Meanwhile, I’m still taking my liposomal glutathione pills :) Thank you for everything Modern Discontent!
Thank you Charlotte!
I'll be very honest and say that I sort of lost confidence while writing this article, as many of the articles cited don't provide direct arguments to secondary bacterial infection, and more so cites a lot of observational data, so the actual mechanisms weren't exactly clear.
And so it sort of came down to "microbiome important for protection, infection damages microbiome, therefore another infection may happen".
It's something that can be seen as a bit too simplistic, and it also raises the question as to how people get infected if the microbiome is intended to protect them in the first place.
So it raises a lot of questions, but I released it even with these thoughts in mind as it sort of becomes a headache to try to check for every little thing.
I think there are so many variables- I commend you trying to link them all. I definitely think the links you made seem very valid and largely unexplored. Hyper-inflammatory responses are definitely leading to weird outcomes- and we are only beginning to understand the immune response to viruses- IgG1 through 4 are just the tip of the iceberg. I love your analysis of the supplements to this degree, because as a neophyte it’s so difficult to navigate what supplements can actually help!
I do appreciate the comments Charlotte.
When researching these topics you don't know what's out there, so I generally start with searching up words or phrases and open up all of the studies possible. Then I skim through them and see what content each paper has, and look through a few citations if they seem interesting, then you sort of see how you can put the information together.
So I usually say I cite maybe half (and sometimes fewer than half) of the actual papers I look through, so I hope people understand the amount of work many people put into when they sift through studies.
I do enjoy covering supplements and pharmaceuticals, because I'm always interested in looking at the pathways or mechanisms of these things. Far too many people are interested in what something treats, or what's happening, rather than examining how this could happen.
It's the underlying mechanisms that helps you learn how to think by piecing information together, rather than what to think that just tells you this is what is going on.
When I caught omicron, I barely had any sign of illness but I had a couple weeks of gut difficulty. You brought up a lot of good possibilities as to why that is. I try to make homemade sauerkraut regularly, and I feel so much better when I eat it every day.
I was actually going to include a post about gut-virus or not gut-virus, but that just went down it's own tangent.
Some evidence suggests that infectious virus can be found in the gut, while others use proxy measures such as PCR and antigen assays to make this assumption. Many of the initial findings used PCR and then said the virus can be found there, hence the US officials being probed for viruses in China.
So some evidence suggests this may be the case, and the virus may target the ACE-II receptors of the gut epithelial. HOWEVER, there's a lot of other factors to consider in making that argument as well.
In any case, eating probiotic-rich foods is probably a good deal regardless!
It seems like it would be harder for a virus to attack receptors in the gut because our immune system hopefully has fought an infection enough in the body before it reaches the gut. And I've heard people talk about a human virome as well as a biome. Which makes me think of your point about possibly activating a virus that's already present in the gut, or maybe even changing the viral balance. I've heard theories about the Epstein-Barr virus, that it lives in an inactivated form in many areas the body, then certain conditions activate it. Interesting stuff!
This sort of 'science' is laughable, considering that 'viruses' have never been shown to be the cause of disease, nor contagious..
Virology is a pseudoscience and 'viruses' are used as boogieman, to scare people to take the lethal injections (a.k.a vaccines).
Ask a proper virologist, such as Stefan Lanka.. friends know why :)
Maybe just part of the disease progression rather than its cause...