carbs

Gut bacteria, pain and anxiety connections: Klebsiella and ankylosing spondylitis

December 28, 2018 By Trudy Scott 21 Comments

We know about the gut-brain connection where the health of our microbiome impacts how anxious or depressed we feel, but we often forget that there is a gut-pain connection too and how addressing dysbiosis and bad bacteria in the gut can have far-reaching benefits.

An old work friend recently reached out asking for help for her husband who had been diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, ulcerative colitis and gluten sensitivity, and was not seeing results with conventional treatment. I did some digging for them and a colleague mentioned that they had addressed Klebsiella when they discovered that her husband had genes predisposing him to ankylosing spondylitis. Read on to see what I’ve learned.

Klebsiella as a precursor to ankylosing spondylitis

The paper shared with me: The relationship between Klebsiella infection and ankylosing spondylitis, discusses the HLA-B27 gene and the Klebsiella connection:

Klebsiella-reactive arthritis is the precursor stage occurring in the early and active phases of ankylosing spondylitis.

Let’s learn more about Klebsiella, ankylosing spondylitis, the anxiety connection and prevalence, the role of neuro-inflammation and genes, the problems of a high carb diet and the role the amino acids GABA, tryptophan and DPA play in pain and anxiety relief and being able to quit the carbs easily, plus provide sleep support.

In case you’re not familiar with Klebsiella, this excellent FX Medicine article describes it as follows:

Klebsiella pneumoniae (KP) is a type of gram-negative rod-shaped bacteria that can cause different types of infections ranging from pneumonia (lung), blood infections (septicaemia), wound or surgical infections, urinary tract infections, small intestinal bowel overgrowth (SIBO), ankylosing spondylitis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis and meningitis (brain).

Ankylosing spondylitis is an inflammatory disease of the spine

In case you’re not familiar with the condition ankylosing spondylitis (pronounced like this) the Mayo Clinic site provides this summary:

Ankylosing spondylitis is an inflammatory disease that, over time, can cause some of the vertebrae in your spine to fuse. This fusing makes the spine less flexible and can result in a hunched-forward posture. If ribs are affected, it can be difficult to breathe deeply.

Ankylosing spondylitis affects men more often than women. Signs and symptoms typically begin in early adulthood. Inflammation also can occur in other parts of your body – most commonly, your eyes.

They say there is no cure and the treatments include pain medications and physical therapy to ease symptoms (and surgery in some cases).

I’m all for physical therapy but you’ll notice there is no mention of gut health or Klebsiella. This is why we have to keep searching for root causes – and work with a functional medicine practitioner – no matter what the health condition, be it ankylosing spondylitis or anything else.

Prevalence of anxiety in ankylosing spondylitis

As with most physical conditions there is a connection with anxiety. This paper: Prevalence of psychological disorders, sleep disturbance and stressful life events and their relationships with disease parameters in Chinese patients with ankylosing spondylitis reports that

AS [ankylosing spondylitis] patients had more severe psychological disorders, sleep disturbance, and stressful life events.

Prevalence of anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbance was 31.6%, 59.3%, and 31.0% respectively.

We have to ask ourselves if we have anxiety, depression and insomnia because of the pain being experienced or because of one or more of the root causes that contribute to both pain and anxiety.

Microbiota disturbance, neuro-inflammation, and anxiety

Often the research focuses on the former but we know that there is Evidence for interplay among antibacterial-induced gut microbiota disturbance, neuro-inflammation, and anxiety in mice. In this 2018 animal study treatment with lactobacilli suppresses this neuro-inflammation.

Ankylosing spondylitis, Crohn’s disease, genes and a high carb diet

The above FX Medicine article shares the connection between ankylosing spondylitis, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, as well as the genetic susceptibility, together with the problems of a high carb diet:

Genetically susceptible people, such as those who have the HLA-B27 allelotypes and consume a high starch/carbohydrate diet, can trigger a growth in Klebsiella in the bowel, the starch becoming a main food supply for the Klebsiella.

The amino acids for pain, carb addition, anxiety and insomnia

The amino acids come into the picture again, helping to ease the pain, provide precursors for neurotransmitter production until the microbiome is balanced, and eliminate carbohydrate cravings so they can be given up without willpower.

As always figuring out your own imbalance and doing an amino acid trial is key. Here is a summary of how they may help in this instance, assuming you have low levels of GABA, serotonin and/or endorphins:

GABA helps with stress eating of carbs, eases physical anxiety, eases some pain.
Tryptophan helps with afternoon and evening carb cravings, eases mental worry-type anxiety and depression, and also eases some pain. Both GABA and tryptophan help with insomnia.
DPA boosts endorphins providing acupuncture-like pain relief and provides the emotional comfort that starchy treats often do.

The FX Medicine article has treatment and prevention tips for you to share with your functional medicine doctor, who will be able to run a functional stool test such as the GI-MAP offered by Diagnostic Solutions Lab.

Just because there are these gut bacteria, pain, anxiety, Klebsiella and ankylosing spondylitis connections, it doesn’t necessarily mean everyone with ankylosing spondylitis has Klebsiella or that everyone who has Klebsiella will go on to develop ankylosing spondylitis (as stated above) or even that everyone with ankylosing spondylitis will have anxiety. I’m simply connecting some dots so you can start to think outside the box.

I’d love to hear what has worked for you or a loved one with ankylosing spondylitis and/or if you’ve seen elevated Klebsiella on your stool test or have the genetic predisposition?

Have the amino acids and a low-carb diet helped the healing process and eased some of your anxiety while addressing the underlying Klebsiella infection?

The Anxiety Summit – Anxiety: the SCD diet, carbs, adrenals and leaky gut

June 7, 2016 By Trudy Scott 25 Comments

Steven Wright, creator of SCDlifestyle, was interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Anxiety: the SCD diet, carbs, adrenals and leaky gut

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet /SCD: the history and the basics
The GAPs diet – the similarities and differences
Stressful times and panic attacks and recovering
Adrenal health and restricting carbs too much
Leaky gut and glutamine

Here are some gems from our interview (I really enjoy Steve’s common-sense advice, especially when you are feeling overwhelmed):

And so if you can adopt the mindset of hey, you know what, this is just an exploration of food. I’m just going to throw out all my beliefs for six months and I’m going to try buying that weird fruit at the grocery store; I’m going to buy a new pan; I’m going to burn some things and just try to make it an exploration, like try to mess it up. If you can do that, if you can get some sort of mindset shift there where it becomes a fun little game, what I would do is I would have a spice of the week and I would put that spice on everything. I don’t care what they say in cookbooks or chef schools, I’ve never been to chef school actually. I would like love to go maybe sometime. But I would just take like oregano and I would put oregano on everything. I’d put it on my vegetables; I’d put it on my fish; I’d put it on the beef; I’d put it on the chicken I cooked just to see what it tasted like. Like somebody says you should never put rosemary on your whatever you’re cooking. Well how do they know? Why don’t you make up the choice for yourself?

We cover leaky gut, autoimmunity and anxiety:

So your immune system is concentrated in your gut. It’s remarkable to think of that, but the reason why is in case these different molecules of the wrong size or the wrong type get into your gut then they gum in and they just kind of like start to attack it and it creates a war. And so if your gut is chronically leaky, like it is for essentially anyone with an autoimmune condition, because that’s per Dr. Fasano’s theory, that’s essentially the way in which you become autoimmune, you’re going to have a war raging in your bloodstream, in your body, in your gut for all day all night. And so that consumes a lot of resources; it creates a lot of inflammatory cytokines; it also regulates some other pathways, which can be circulated, end up in the brain and end up causing anxiety and depression. And so I do believe that there is a subset of people who have anxiety who have either leaky gut as one of their main causes or at least it’s contributing to it. And so digestive health is really important for anxiety in my opinion.

This article: Diet and Inflammatory Bowel Disease, discusses the diets commonly recommended to IBD patients and reviews the supporting data for the low-fermentable oligosaccharide, disaccharide, monosaccharide, and polyol diet; the specific carbohydrate diet; the anti-inflammatory diet; and the Paleolithic diet. The authors of this paper do say that the role of dietary interventions in the management of IBD still needs to be tested vigorously in patients.

Here is the SCD Quick Start Guide

And for health practitioners wanting to learn how to get their message out in a bigger way and help more people: The Practitioner Liberation Project

If you are not already registered for the Anxiety Summit you can get live access to the speakers of the day here: www.theAnxietySummit.com

Missed this interview or can’t listen live? Or want this and the other great interviews for your learning library? Purchase the MP3s or MP3s + transcripts and listen when it suits you.

You can find your purchasing options here.: Anxiety Summit Season 1, Anxiety Summit Season 2, Anxiety Summit Season 3, and Anxiety Summit Season 4.

No sugar or sugar in moderation? I say NO sugar!

January 10, 2014 By Trudy Scott 23 Comments

Delicious Chocolate Cake

More and more research is supporting the fact that sugar and carbs are as addicting as drugs and as difficult to quit for some people. I came across this quote the other day: “Stressed spelled backwards is desserts. Coincidence? I think not!” and it’s perfect. We crave sugar because we are stressed, sad, looking for pleasure and for energy and motivation. And we self-medicate with it in the same way as drugs, caffeine and tobacco.

This paper called Obesity: The emerging neurobiology of calorie addiction was published just a few days ago:

“The increased availability and consumption of highly palatable foods is the major factor behind the rise of obesity and type 2 diabetes in developed countries.”

“Progress has been made in recent years in understanding the neurobiological underpinnings for this preference” for sucrose: “sucrose activates dopamine neurons in a region of the brain called the striatum, and the resulting release of dopamine is associated with pleasure.”

“Moreover, the repeated consumption of high levels of sucrose can create a cycle of continued overconsumption—even compulsive eating—in order to recapture the initial feelings of pleasure. This is similar in many ways to drug abuse or addiction, and also involves some of the same signalling pathways within the body”

This dopamine/pleasure mechanism is just one way that leads to sugar addiction. This Oct 2013 paper in Nutrition, Neurobiologic basis of craving for carbohydrates says this:

“There is a relationship between emotional disorders, obesity, and craving for carbohydrates”

“Research on the basis of carbohydrate craving is varied, but may be grouped into five main areas: the serotonergic system, palatability and hedonic response [i.e. pleasure], the motivational system, stress response systems, and gene-environment interaction”

Last week I posed this question on my facebook page: “no sugar or sugar in moderation? what’s your vote? I say NO sugar! Do you think that’s too harsh and too unrealistic?” I was referring to ANY sweetener other than fresh fruit.

Here are some of the comments my tribe offered:

I’d say in moderation. However I’m trying to reduce my view of moderation over time.”
I was totally sweetener-free for a long time so I know how that feels for me. I’ve been experimenting with raw honey I seem to do fine with it “in moderation” (i.e. even a little bit each day is fine – although I don’t make baked goods so I’m not using large quantities.)
I seem at present to be incapable of moderation with sugar. So for me none at all might be the way I need to go. Humans developed over many thousands of years with just the sweetness of unprocessed fruits and maybe some honey now and then. Our culture’s idea of what “moderate” even means in regards to processed sugars is highly skewed.
Zero is way too hard for me but everyone is different
I say: a little bit of everything is just perfect!
Zero sugar is too rigid for me…I don’t think any of my clients say no to sugar 100%…I do avoid white and brown processed sugar ~95% of the time but will eat it when at someone’s home made with love. Every day, I use maple syrup to sweeten teas and in baked goods.
I don’t think a little bit of natural sugar is bad at all; but only just a little bit.
I’d say it’s ok for someone else [the zero sugar]! For me, I have to have a little here and there – just like bread. However, it’s a fraction of what it used to be. Maybe at some point I can whittle down from there.

Very few agreed with me about zero sugar. Here is what they said:

I’m with you! it is realistic as I have given up sugar and all artificial sweeteners.
NO sugar – Dr so astounded that I’ve brought my numbers down so much after wanting to give me meds for years. She said no meds would’ve brought my numbers down as much as I’ve done with diet and especially NO sugar or carbs.

Here are some of my thoughts: “Moderation” has quite a big range for some people and I see it going out of the window when it comes to baked goods. I see many recipes calling for pretty large amounts of maple syrup of honey. I recently heard Tana Amen, BSN, RN and author of The Omni Diet speak about sugar and crack cocaine in the same sentence and she said: “they are both addicting. We’d never do crack in moderation so why do sugar in moderation!?” I agree!

A friend and I were at a recent celiac function that had tons of gluten-free treats – all loaded with carbs and sugar and not healthy at all even though they were gluten-free. We had no desire to have any of the treats. That’s how we should feel! Zero sugar should be easy!

You won’t crave sugar or even feel the need for a little bit or an occasional treat if you have balanced biochemistry and are not stressed, no nutritional deficiencies (low zinc can be a factor) and are eating to control blood sugar.

You won’t be defensive when asked about it and you won’t feel deprived when you do go without it. You won’t feel that you need just a little. You also won’t have to white-knuckle it and use willpower.

Where do you stand? No sugar or sugar in moderation? And do you think that zero sugar is too harsh and too unrealistic? Do you think addiction plays a role? Are you white-knuckling it or can you take it or leave it?

Do you need help to get to zero sugar consumption? Here are some resources for you.

Check out these chapters in my book “The Antianxiety Food Solution: How the Foods You Eat Can Help You Calm Your Anxious Mind, Improve Your Mood, and End Cravings”: eat real food, blood sugar balancing and the amazing amino acids.
Stay tuned for the upcoming release of my homestudy program “Amazing Amino Acids for Emotional Eating.” Listen to me present on upcoming calls and tele-summits as I share some of the highlights of this wonderful 6 week program.