Rebuilding Microbiota Balance
The RMB diet, also known as a Rebuilding Microbiota Balance diet, is a dietary recommendation aiming to a healthy balanced gut microbiota. All of the recommendations are both good to microbiota and can also provide enough nutrition.
This specific diet is designed by Innova Biotics.
Here are details:
- Do not eat foods that cause intolerance problems, including, but not limited to, meat, eggs, milk, sea foods and so on. If so, stop whatever causes the healthy problem.
- Refined rice and wheat flour should be gradually reduced until completely stopped for the purpose of rebuilding microbiota balance: especially the steamed buns, buns, noodles, etc., do not eat sweet foods, puddings.
- Foods such as wheat, barley, and rye and their derivatives such as pizza, breads, pasta, biscuits, crackers, cakes, are not suitable for people with gluten intolerance. They MUST be removed from the daily list for the purpose of rebuilding microbiota balance.
- The whole grains foods rich in cellulose are recommended with correct processing.
- Red meat foods are prohibited, including pork, lamb and beef during microbiota rebuilding unless otherwise permitted.
- White meat, such as fish and chicken, are generally recommended, but do not eat too much and make a good rotation, which means you can’t eat either of them on a daily basis.
- Eggs and tofu can be eaten appropriately. However, many people didn’t realize that they are intolerant to eggs. The food intolerance test indicated that more than half of people are intolerant to eggs. If you do, remove eggs from your daily list.
- Do not eat any grilled, fried, or greasy foods. Try to avoid frying vegetables with too much oil. It is recommended to eat less processed foods.
- Fruits and vegetables, especially those rich in fiber are good for microbiota, so more fruits and vegetables mean more good bacteria. But don't eat food you are intolerable to.
- Potatoes, yams, and sweet potatoes are cooked and cooled before eating, so that the content of resistant starch is relatively high, which is good for health.
- The recommended oils include grape seed oil, olive oil, and avocado oil. Do not heating. They are good for mixing.
- You can eat nuts, such as walnuts, pine nuts, pumpkin seeds and so on.
- The more diverse, colorful foods, the better, and the more varieties the better. Reduce the degree of cooking.
- Chew slowly
- Vinegar such as rice vinegar or apple vinegar is very helpful.
- Fermented foods are suggested.
- A good food rotation means you can eat a food every 3-4 days or longer, but not every day.
- Exercise at least 1-2 times a week, with the help of sweating, for at least an hour or more.
Remember, drink plenty of water! The recommended daily water intake for adults should be more than 2500ml.
By our observations, we realized that it’s more important not to eat some foods than to eat the recommended good foods. Some people have their symptoms dramatically reduced simply removed wheat products from their food list.
Please share your story if you followed our recommendations and it helped you. Thank you.
Gut Microbiota
1) What is gut microbiota?
In the past 20 years, studies on gut microbiota are becoming a very hot research field since first Science publication from Gordon’s lab (Xu J, Bjursell MK, Himrod J, Deng S, Carmichael LK, Chiang HC, Hooper LV, Gordon JI. A genomic view of the human-Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron symbiosis. Science. 2003 Mar 28;299(5615):2074-6. doi: 10.1126/science.1080029. PMID: 12663928) using whole genome sequencing. By 11/12/2022, the 3 most important journals, Science, Nature, Cell, have published 235, 244 and 157 papers on this field, respectively. The association between gut microbiota and diseases, especially chronic diseases, has been dramatically documented.
A blooming research field in gut microbiota
Gut microbiota refers to the microorganisms including bacteria, archaea, fungi, and viruses that are located mostly in the large intestine. The estimated number is more than 100 trillion, which is ∼10 times more bacterial cells than the number of human cells and over 100 times the amount of microbiome as the human genome. They include up to 1000 bacterial species, mostly anaerobes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_microbiota
Microbiota is considered as a hidden “organ” inside the human body, with an estimated weight of 1-2kg, which is the same weight as liver. However, the balanced microbiota is a good organ, while the imbalanced microbiota will definitely be a bad organ and have a huge impact on human health.
The switch from balanced microbiota in the infancy to imbalanced microbiota happens gradually, affected by diet change, use of antibiotics, environmental change, et al. In an average life time, a person would consume around 60 tons of food, meanwhile, many microorganisms from the foods and water will also have the chance to get to the human body. They are survived and passed through the long intestine and colonized in the large intestine if not killed by stomach acid. The microorganisms inside the colon will be either boosted by their favorite foods or killed due to an unfriendly environment. Every day the microbiota have fluctuation in amounts.
2) What is leaky gut?
Leaky gut refers to a very small leakage status in gastrointestinal epithelium that caused by certain factors, such as antibiotics, alcohol, intestinal flora imbalance, bacterial toxins, infection, toxic chemicals, radioactivity, aging, stress, pollution, some drugs, unhealthy diet, industrial food Additives, and so on. The incompletely digested proteins, toxins and microorganisms in the gut will enter the body through the leaky hole, causing inflammation, immune response, and diseases.
There are also a lot of synthetic food additives, emulsifiers, preservatives, etc. that can increase the degree of intestinal barrier leakage. NSAIDs, pregnancy and surfactants (such as bile acids, emulsifiers, etc.) and even excessive exercise can also increase the rate of intestinal leakage. The balance of the gut microbiota affects the barrier function, and the condition of the mucosal barrier in turn affects the gut microbiota.
Healthy problems caused by mild Leaky gut include food intolerance, allergies, abdominal pain, bloating, fatigue, loss of appetite, insomnia, heartburn, malnutrition, constipation, low immunity, easy to catch colds, etc.
Severe leaky gut symptoms include urinary tract infection, autoimmune disease, depression, diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, and other mental illnesses, etc. Patients with solid tumors who also have leaky gut may have more bacteria in their tumors.
Diseases currently considered to be related to leaky gut include the following symptoms: 1) food intolerance; (2) irritable bowel syndrome (IBS); (3) small intestinal bacterial overgwth (SIBO); (4) inflammatory Intestinal disease (IBD); (5) rheumatoid arthritis; (6) multiple sclerosis; (7) allergic asthma; (8) allergic dermatitis; (9) psoriasis; (10) systemic erythema Lupus; (11) dysmenorrhea; (12) polycystic ovary syndrome; (13) depression, anxiety; (14) chronic fatigue syndrome; (15) Hashimoto’s thyroiditis; (16) migraine; (17) ) Parkinson's disease; (18) Alzheimer's disease (senile dementia); (19) celiac disease; (20) chronic kidney disease; (21) acne; (22) fatty liver; (23) cardiovascular disease; ( 24) Type 1 diabetes; (25) Myasthenia gravis; (26) Skin allergy rash; (27) Various chronic inflammations; (28) Liver dysfunction; (29) Malnutrition; (30) Atherosclerosis.
The treatment and conditioning of Leaky gut should follow the 5R program of functional medicine: including five consecutive steps: Remove; Replace; Reinoculate; Repair; Rebalance.
Celiac disease
Celiac disease (CeD) is a gluten-induced autoimmune disorder that occurs in 1% of people in most populations, which has no effective treatments but a lifelong gluten-free diet for symptom relieving. The prevalence of this disease has continued to rise globally which has brought a huge social-economic burden worldwide. Many endeavors towards CeD treatments failed and no effective cures are approved yet. The developing drugs or therapies did not aim to leaky gut (increased gut permeability) which we think is the reason why they failed.
Our ultimate goal is to develop commercialized products that are effective and helpful to CeD patients.
Mitochondria and Health
At the moment you read this, you’re consuming energy. The energy is supplied in the form of ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate), which is produced by an important intracellular organelle, mitochondria. Every second, the mitochondria are producing plenty of energy, which is estimated that daily production of ATP is approximately 3.0 × 1025 ATP (equal to 25Kg). The ATP generated by mitochondria accounts for 95% of all, the remaining are produced by anaerobic glycolysis.
Energy supply is the most important function of mitochondria, it is therefore called the powerhouse of the cell. Some cells have thousands of mitochondria in one single cell. For example, one single hepatocyte may have up to 2500 mitochondria; some muscle cells have up to 40% of the cytoplasm volume occupied by mitochondria. Different cell types have variable numbers of mitochondria. Cells with a high demand for energy tend to have more mitochondria.
The weight of the human brain accounts for only 2% of the human body, while consuming 20% of total glucose, which means more ATP generated in the brain than other tissues do. A single cortical neuron would utilize 4.7 billion ATP molecules per second. On a daily basis, the calculated ATP consumption is 5.7kg per day, which is 5 times of the brain weight. Why is ATP even more than the whole brain? That is because ATP can’t be stored in the human body, it must be utilized once produced. The utilized ATP will be switched into ADP, and turned back to ATP again once it gets energy. This switch rate of ADP/ATP, called turnover rate, is extremely high in the brain.
Energy supply is not the only function of mitochondria. Besides ATP supply, mitochondria are also involved in many other functions, such as lipid metabolism, heme synthesis, cell death, calcium homeostasis, as well as maintaining control of the cell cycle and cell growth.
It’s so important for the cell to keep mitochondria fully functional, otherwise it would cause diseases. Mitochondrial dysfunction will be problematic, it is known to be related to cell aging, apoptosis (or programmed cell death) or even cancer. A byproduct of mitochondrial metabolism is reactive oxygen species (ROS), which is a damage contributor to the mitochondria structure and causes dysfunction. ROS production is dramatically increased during exercise so it must be diminished or it would cause damages to mitochondria.
Mitochondrial dysfunction is associated with the following diseases, including but not limited to: Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, chronic fatigue syndrome, Huntington’s disease, diabetes, autism.
Mitochondria is not a stationary organelle in the cells, their quantity may be fluctuated by mitochondrial fusion and fission, which is regulated upon changing demands for energy. In skeletal muscles it can increase by more than 100-fold during exercise. Components such as CoQ-10, alpha-lipoic acid, resveratrol, L-carnitine and creatine may also boost mitochondrial functions.