Bacteriocins: Key to surviving the age of antibiotics?

Normally, you should have numerous species of microbes inhabiting your gastrointestinal tract and other body locations that produce bacteriocins, i.e., natural antibiotics that keep unhealthy microbial species from taking over. Unfortunately, modern antibiotics, while necessary at times, have killed off species that were previously protecting you by producing bacteriocins. This allows the emergence of health problems mostly unique to modern people including weight gain, type 2 diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, depression, anxiety and many others. 

Rebuilding a microbiome that includes species that produce bacteriocins is an important factor in reclaiming control over health disrupted by exposure to modern antibiotics. 

Transcript

Why Antibiotics Matter More Now

William Davis, MD 0:00

I'd like to talk about a topic of increasing importance in the age of antibiotics. That is, ever since the first antibiotic penicillin was discovered in 1928. Of course, you all know there's been a huge proliferation of other antibiotics, 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.

The Hidden Cost Of Overprescribing

William Davis, MD 1:15

So there's no question, there's a time and place for antibiotics. If you had pneumococcal pneumonia and 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 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 life-saving. 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 irtal 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 apnea. 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

Chronic Conditions After Microbiome Damage

William Davis, MD 2:45

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 bacteriocins. Bacteriocins 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 bacteriocins. And all they are are small molecule peptide antibiotics. So they're natural antibiotics. Now, these bactericins, because they are the product of thousands, 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 entirely, mostly gram-negative proteobacteria. So these are essentially fecal microbes. There's also some gram-positive species like Staphylococcus aureus, but it really helps to narrow this down to the gram-negative proteobacteria. That is the gram-negative species of stool, of fecal material. And these might be familiar to you: E. coli, Salmonella, Srracea, Pseudomonas, 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 microbe's death, that then gets into your bloodstream. That's how gastrointestinal microbes in this class of gram-negative proteobacteria 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 rosacea or depression or anxiety as being the consequence of a disrupted gastrointestinal microbiome, but they

Bacteriocins And Endotoxin Explained

William Davis, MD 5:05

are. And much of it mediated, there's some other effects also, but much of it mediated by this bloodborne phenomenon called endotoxemia. Well, when we're exposed to antibiotics, we lose many species, hundreds, literally hundreds of species, many of which were producing these bacteria sins. Well, once we appreciate this, we can start to put that insight into use. That is, we can start to restore microbes that produce bacteria sins. 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 gasteri, lactobacillus rotori, and bacillus subtilis. Three microbes chosen because they colonize the small intestine, where SIBO occurs, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, as well as the colon, and produce bacteriocins. That is natural antibiotics effective in killing this species of SIBO, all those E. coli, Pseudomonas, serratia, as well as, by the way, the gram positive, Staphylococcus aureus, streptococcal species, and aerococcal 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 in my WilliamDavisMB.com. And if you need some assistance, join my conversations in my membership website, which is innercircle.drdavisinfinite health.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 replaced the original Bacillus coagulants with Bacillus subtletis. There's nothing wrong with Bacillus coagulants, it's a 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 Bacillus subtleis, 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 milliliter serving. Now, the original recipe called for co-fermentation of all three together. As time has gone on, and while this works for

Using SIBO Yogurt To Rebuild

William Davis, MD 7:35

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 they 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, and that we don't know how to do just yet. But back to this idea of bacterio sins. So we want microbes that produce bacterio sins. Not all microbes do that. Of all the microbes that could inhabit your gastrointestinal tract, only a fraction are known to produce bacteriocins. There are several species in fermented foods. Fermented foods like kombucha, kefirs, sauerkraut, fermented veggies. And by the way, if you didn't follow my conversation, you now know that commercial kefir shouldn't really be called kafir. There are three very important components in traditional kefir. That is kefir that was passed down from generation to generation over many years, typically in uh Eastern Europe or Asia. Those kinds of traditional kafirs have, in addition to many bacterial species, they also have acetobacter species that produce acetic acid. They also have fungal species, such as Sacromyces species or Cluveromyces species. They also have a very, very important lactobacillus species, probably the thing that is responsible for the bulk of benefits from traditional kefir, and that's the microbe lactobacillus kefir and ofacians. None of this is present in commercial, in modern commercial kefir. So if you follow my conversations, I show you how to recreate traditional kefir, 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 kefir. And among those microbes, among the effects of getting this kefir and other fermented foods is a restoration of species that produce bacteriacins. Species like Lactococcus lactis or lactobusus plantarum or Wyzellus

Fermented Foods And Traditional Kefir

William Davis, MD 9:55

species or real champion, Pediococcus species, like Pediococcus pentisaceous or Pediococcus acidylacti. Those are, you don't have to remember those names. Just know that these are species that occur in fermented foods. And interestingly, most of the time those microbes don't take up residence. 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 kefir, produce bacteriocins. So bacteriocins think of them as being smarter than conventional pharmaceutical antibiotics. Conventional pharmaceutical antibiotics tend to be indiscriminate. They kill pathogens, bad things like E. coli in a urinary tract infection. They also kill off numerous beneficial species, including many species that were previously producing bactericins for you to protect you. And so you've lost those microbes. So that's why one of the reasons why fermented foods are so powerful. And it may be it's the loss of bactericins 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 bactericins and are smarter, more selective than pharmaceutical antibiotics. Because it's taken millions of years of evolution in mammalian body, we're mammals, of course, in the mammalian body, for these microbes to acquire the ability to produce bacterioins that don't harm other microbes that they cooperate with. I mean, you don't want lactobacillus roteri, for instance, producing a bacteriocin that kills lactobacillus gastri. That'd be silly. So thankfully, these microbes have evolved, including evolution of their bacteriocents, so they don't kill off other beneficial species, but they do kill off those undesirable species, especially gram-negative proteobacteria. 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 bacteria since. We do that, of course. You can do it with acebo yogurt, go further by consuming lots and lots of fermented foods, including, I hope, trying to recreate traditional kefir, 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 acetobacter, which, by the way, the presence of acetobacter that produces acetate or acetic acid amplifies the production of bactericins, as well as that lactobus kefir ovation and fungal species. By the way, you'll know you have

Key Takeaways And Next Steps

William Davis, MD 12:50

traditional kefir when you get those so-called grains, those little cauliflower-like growths that fall to the bottom that you can use to propagate and make future batches of kefir. But anyway, those are the key pieces. We're going to get smarter over time on how to purposefully take advantage of bactericines to regain control over what has become now across the country a microbiome gone bad.