Recent content by Otto Kretschmer

Neil deGrasse Tyson is the public face of science at least in the US. He cannot afford to promote stuff that is not 100% proven because if even some of it is proven wrong, he will be accused of spreading pseudoscience and the entire scientific endeavour will suffer. Additionally, his lifelong...

What do studies show about that precise matter? Are fermented foods beneficial? If yes, to what degree? I myself love eating kimchi and I'd like to know if it might have any positive effect on me besides immediate gustatory satisfaction.

@Michael Harrop Neil deGrasse Tyson (the spiritual successor of Carl Sagan) covered the gut-brain axis in a StarTalk episode a month ago, the video had 320,000 views as of now. Perhaps you could at least try to contact him? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIeVrVm1W1A

Nothing can translate into a widely used therapy until phase 3 trials are completed - and they cost a lot.

A few months ago I read an article from 2019 about Alzheimer's research - progress got stalled by 10-15 years simply because senior researchers refused to fund or publish ANYTHING that wasn't about amyloid. And it shows quite clearly that even among scientists, a group expected to be highly open...

To be specific, I would gladly accept more FMT research regardless of what political background it comes from.

Will there even be money for clinical trials? I don't follow US domestic politics but I do know that there have been massive budget cuts to scientific research in the US - including $2.7 bln cuts to NIH funded research. They have the potential to make the whole US science moribund.

Personally I wouldn't expect much from RFK Jr given that he is a nearly stereotypical crank. Even leaving aside his usual anti vaxx stuff, he holds a lot of other idiotic beliefs HIV denialism denial of the link between UV exposure and skin cancer, detoxification BS (belief that diseases...

That's... intriguing. While I know a lot about the potential of gut microbes to treat a vast range of diseases - I am much less informed about it's potential to treat diseases like mine - and even less so about the role of the immune system in it.

I have poor eyesight due to Retinopathy of Prematurity - retinal scarring limits my visual resolution since my brain has to construct image from a smaller amount of information. I just doubt gut microbiome manipulation could help me as retinal cells don't regenerate :(

Another autism study, nice! I would like to do some personality and cognitive optimization of myself and I am frustrated how slow the pace of development is. The standard of care for Neuroticism are the SSRIs which were introduced in 1987, the same year Amiga 500 was released. Can you imagine...

I wonder what microorganisms might influence visuospatial memory? I have poor visuospatial memory which makes it hard for me to memorize streets and Chinese characters. My background - a premie born 2 months too soon. I suffered 2 bouts of pneumonia in an ICU due to de facto medical negligence...

@Michael Harrop Have you tried contacting doctors who might help you popularize FMT? They might be more open minded than politicians and they have more authority than random people like us.

I will be a genius in the future? Yess. 😺

@Michael Harrop I would do FMT some 3-5 years from now but I have some doubts: While there are certain traits like emotional stability, working and visuospatial memory, which I'd like to improve, there are others that I very clearly don't want to change I don't want to lose my extreme...