HADZA GUTS HAVE THE ANCESTRAL CORE MICROBIOTA IN ABUNDANCE; High Dose RAW Starch Can Suppress Bifidobacteria, Roseburia, F. prausnitzii That Make Us Human (Part II)

Baobab Tree
Harvested by Hadza: fruit, seeds, honey, bark, etc

COOKING BROADENED HUMAN UTILIZATION AND FORAGING OF WILD AND TOXIC PLANTS

Let's neo-romanticize the Hadza hunter-gatherer studies for a moment. They eat a diet rich in starchy tubers, raw roots, chewing some of the tough, fibrous ones for several minutes, extracting as much starch, nutrients and energy as they can. The carbohydrate content varies from 27 to 70% of the tuber (see chart at end). Fiber varies from 3-35%. Cooking generally breaks tough fibers down. Stewing, boiling and roasting all make these more easily chewable and thus digestible.

Fermentation does as well. Paleophil has a short list of tubers that are fermented to process them into safe to eat starches (truly ancient 'safe starches' lol). Several varieties were put underground and allowed to pickle/ferment to remove toxins. The great majority of tubers on earth are toxic if raw. Nature provided underground protection for them. Potatoes contain trypsin and protease inhibitors (never fed raw to livestock or eaten by humans raw) and cassava, cyanide derivatives.  In Africa, co-evolution of consumption of toxic cassava may have actually conferred an advantage by improving sickle cell anemia. On the other hand, trypsin inhibitors in yams and potatoes are heat labile and easily deactivated by cooking. Heat rapidly degrades these toxins, making them safe for eating for everyone: small toddlers, children, elderly and adults.

In Africa and the tropics, extracts from toxic potatoes and yams can even be isolated for use in making poison arrows for hunting wild game.




RS3 AND RS2 FEED DIFFERENT FLORA IN THE GUT

Cooked starches with skins feed the great majority of our gut flora whereas raw, native starches feed only a few (but important few). From recent gut profiles from individuals who submitted samples to Genova, uBIOME and American Gut, a distinct pattern emerges if a high-dose raw resistant starch diet is implemented. Diversity is markedly low. The immunoprotective Roseburia/clostridia XIVa are missing. Is Roseburia important? I think so -- it is one of the strains that make us human, no hamsters or chimps. See prior post: Bifidobacteria longum, Roseburia, F. prausnitzii (and Akkermansia) Made Us Human (NONE OF THESE EAT RAW POTATO STARCH) (Part 1) NSFW



N=1, THREE HIGH-DOSE RS2 INTREPID SELF-EXPERIMENTERS

Here are 3 individuals (reports: a, b, c) who biohacked their guts and used high dose RS2 for a period of time before submitting stool samples to various testing groups: uBIOME, American Gut.

Bacteroidetes-Prevotella and Bacteroides overlap -- they both consume RS2 heartily and easily, as you can see below. On the other hand, the great majority of the core ancestral microbiota do not and with report c, one may observe that even consuming significant fiber as RS3, the Roseburia fails to 'bloom' in the gut. Normally RS3 (alone, sans RS2) feeds or cross-feeds Roseburia extensively based on Alan Walker et al research group. These 2 groups Prevotella and Bacteroides are big starch eaters of cooked digestible carbohydrates as well as resistant starch (cooked cooled, RS3). So they eat EVERYTHING. This is what I have an overgrowth of on/off the last few years of gut healing (and didn't realize). Prevotella is implicated in many cases of dysbiosis and uppergut overgrowths (SIBO/SIFO). Ck out pubmed: Prevotella/dysbiosis.
--T2 diabetes/Obesity
--colorectal cancer
--T1 diabetes
--IBD (Crohn's, UC)
--IBS-C IBS-D
--colorectal cancer
--HIV infection

When I saw the Prevotella on my stool reports I had previously (up until a few weeks) HEY THIS IS LIKE THE HEALTHY BURKINA FASO KIDS. I was totally wrong. My gut was like the dysbiotic HIV and other gut disrupted subjects actually.

I've had a lot of questions more than evolution lately:

What is the pattern that high dose RS2 exerts on the flora?
Does the resultant flora appear Bacteroides heavy and dominant? Why?
What is overgrown?
What is suppressed?
Does this have implications for the host?

Also if a gut is dysbiotic and we throw fire on the flame, will this cause dysbiotic-related metabolic changes? The research is inconsistent but I think the answer is, yes. It is entirely gut dependent. Many do great on raw potato starch and see gut healing. Others may run into obstacles like mine. Even testing for me didn't reveal the obstacles.

Dr Bill Lagakos reviews some studies where RPS or HAM-RS2 may worsen insulin by raising it and adversely effect blood sugars: here. It is not every study but appears to be seen in studies that are more recent IMHO and I suspect that the influence of livestock and human antibiotics adversely skewing our gut flora.

Journal club: new study in healthy pig gut flora, RS2 appears to raise insulin

Gut Microbe Genus Level ANCESTRAL CORE	N=1 (a) 20-40g RS2 VLC UBIOME	N=1 (b) 10-20g RS2 VLC UBIOME	uBiome Normal Avg	N=1 (c) 20-40g RS2 10-20g RS3 PHD CARBS 100-150 g AMGUT
Akkermansia	3.52	undetect	1.2%	0.07
F. prausnitzii	8.56	3.58	9.3%	4.8
Roseburia	0.601	0.166	3.4%	0.4
Eubacterium	0.0591	0.00310	0.9%	0.1
HIGH DOSE RS2 APPEARS TO OVERSELECT Bacteroides (+B-Prevotella)	28.0 (+undetect)	0.617 (+77.4)	9.4% (+7.36%)	46.2 (+undetect)
Bifidobacteria	undetect	0.0311	0.88%	11.32
Ruminococcus	2.21	0.292	6.06%	13.0

HIGHLIGHTED: suppressed immunoprotective and butyrate-producting gut flora



HADZA GUTS (AND HEALTHY MEDITERRANEAN) HAVE NEARLY ALL THE ANCESTRAL CORE MICROBIOTA

See below - this is comparing apples and oranges but let's do it for fun anyway. Comparing healthy (no inflammation or disease) Italians on the Mediterranean diet and Hadza guts, nearly every species of the 7 ancestral core microbiota of healthy humans (per Julien Tap et al research) are accounted for. They are similar or in higher abundance than USA ubiome healthy averages.

It is questionable whether or not the Hadza are truly 'missing' bifido or that lab errors in collection and subsequent bifido determination happened. Personally I think bifido are there!

“The conclusions about relative proportions of bacteria are likely not valid,” says Rob Knight, a microbiome scientist with expertise in technical issues. “Unfortunately there is no published reference for this yet; we’re working on one.” It’s not clear if this problem affects the study’s other conclusions, like the lack of Bifidobacteria. Source: NATGEO

For those on high dose raw starches -- you may observe vast differences.

• the bifidobacteria are absent or nearly extinct (except for report c). 
• F. prausnitizii which typically makes up 10-20% of healthy stool microbiota is only HALF OR LESS of 'normal' for either a hunter-gatherer Hadza or Western urbanite. 
• Bacteroides appears overselected
• low eubacteria 
• no Roseburia/cluster XIVa

To me the most striking losses are bifido, F prausnitzii and Roseburia. These are hugely immunomodulating to the point where when these are used as probiotics in animal models, it is observed that disease and inflammation reverse. Bifidobacteria longum has been widely studied and since it is so easy to culture and grow, offered as a commercial probiotic for years.

Roseburia has recently been shown to reverse peanut allergies in a rodent model. In the gut, this is the superstar butyrate producer.  I think Roseburia/XIVa was key for me when I reversed gluten and dairy allergies after gut healing with eating soil probiotics, B longum probiotics (FloraMEND), steamed mountain white yams and purple potatoes (high RS3 diet) and consuming daily fermented root vegetables. Roseburia eats everything (except raw starches); its favorite foods are inulin, GOS (beans or supplements), chitin, beta glucan (grains, oats, mushrooms) and cooked starches (RS3). I talked about Roseburia HERE.



FIRE CHANGED OUR GUT FLORA 

After hominids utilized fire as a routine tool to increase and unlock the energy content in USOs (underground storage organs), tubers, seeds and rhizomes, our gut flora of course adapted to this. I suspect that with routine employment of cooking, our human gut flora began to love RS3 and the additional fibers that came along it in roasted tubers, roots legumes and seeds.

Let's look at the Hadza. Their current diet is high in wild African, starchy tubers.  Both children and adults use sticks to forage these from the shallow ground in gallery forests and by vegetation near water sources. The amount of starch and RS is relatively lower than Western varieties though.  Contrary to what most people think, I think they eat a low net carb diet because their carb, fruit and berry sources are all extremely high in fiber. They do love their honey harvested from the hives in their native baobab trees. The fiber spectrum in their diets are not low but and I believe this is vastly reflected in the diversity which is almost double that of the healthy urban Italian cohort.

Below I compare their relative dominance in terms of the ancestral core human microbiota ( Nature).

Gut Microbe Genus Level ANCESTRAL CORE	HADZA BETTER GUT DIVERSITY 20-60g RS3 African Tubers+	MEDITERR- ANEAN DIET Italian Cohort	uBiome Normal Avg	N=1 (c) HIGH DOSE RAW POTATO STARCH RS2 20-40g RS2 10-20g RS3
F. prausnitzii	11.8	18.5	9.3%	4.8
Roseburia	3.9	7.7	3.4%	0.4
Eubacterium	2.2	1.4	0.9%	0.1
Bacteroides B-Prevotella	0.2 6.2	7.1 0.4	9.4% 7.36	46.2 (na)
Bifidobacteria	0.02	8.1	0.88%	11.32
Ruminococcus	2.1	8.6	6.06%	13.0

(+ guesstimated)

Ancestral core species were sequenced and quantified in relative abundance. Hadza guts have a ton of diversity -- they are not short any of the immunoprotective or the bugs that produce buttloads of BUTYRATE:

• F. prausnitzii
• Roseburia
• Eubacterium

What I observe is that with high dose RS2, an overselection of gut flora that specialize in raw starches and the de-selection (?suppression) of other species despite adequate consumption of other substrates (RS3). Losing diversity in the gut is the problem with aging/inflammaging, disease and debilitation in the Western world. What is ancestral? What is optimal for a diversified and robust gut?

I've polled a few gut researchers because I don't know sh*t about the gut microbiota. They say that it is highly plausible for overselection and competition of substrate media by a single group of gut flora, to the suppression or detriment of other gut flora.

If I neo-romanticize the Hadza, I would say keeping all fiber in context is helpful. Each person's ancestry play into this. Those who emerged from near the Fertile Crescent are likely to tolerate grains better. I'm Asian and I think we favor legumes, tubers and white rice and more net carbohydrates than  those of northern Europeans/Asians or aboriginal ancestry.

Thoughts?

Hadza wild African cooked tuber
2 slices of one mak’alitako tuber (Emminia entennulifa)
Chewed for ~3min to extract carbs and nutrients
Spit out insoluble 'CUD'

Source: Nature
Hadza hunter forager diet