The power of olive oil -- significant changes to gut microbiome, stool, and food tolerances

[Michael Harrop]

Back in 2018 I posted that Olive oil might be something to consider prior to FMT.

The reason is that when I just added it to my diet it caused a drastic reduction of BM size, frequency, and stench.

Oddly enough, it didn't seem to effect any other areas of my health. And typically when I see those changes to BMs they would be accompanied by drastic improvements to all around health.

Make sure to get the real stuff:

• http://lifehacker.com/the-most-and-least-fake-extra-virgin-olive-oil-brands-1460894373
• Another from 2015: http://www.nclnet.org/evoo_testing

Click to shrink...

Then, over the past year, I've had somewhat of an opposite experience.

I've had olive oil as part of my diet for many years now. When I left home for DC, I had to change my diet since I could no longer cook food. My stool firmness & frequency changed dramatically and immediately. I didn't poop for a week, and it was very firm. I couldn't figure out why.

At some point, I added olive oil back into my diet, and that caused a gradual change subtle enough that I didn't attribute it to the olive oil at first. I then noticed that I seemed to have become intolerant to fruit/sugar, which I typically thrive on. I also then figured out that olive oil, and even olives, were making my stool softer and making me feel worse.

Now, after removing olive oil from my diet for a while, my stool is back to firm, and I can eat fruit/sugar again without issue.

This has some relevance to people who need to go on the keto diet because they can't tolerate various carbs.

 

[EpilepsyFMTcure]

Very interesting. I've tried keto diet twice now (I have epilepsy and 70% of people with epilepsy can be functionally cured by adhering to keto). My second time doing keto was roughly a month ago and for the first week felt AMAZING. Literally all the inflammation in my body went away and I could smell again. I was sleeping through the night and honestly I hadn't felt that good since I was a little kid. My stool was completely normal during that time. Then, around a week and a half in, my gut totally went wrong. loose stool constantly and felt very seizure-ish (meds kept this from being actual seizures).

Anyway, this is very relevant to me because when not trying to do keto or eat particularly healthy, I tend to eat pretty processed fast food. For some reason this diet is the only one I can eat without having absolutely ruined gut status and loose stool. I genuinely believe there is something they put in fast food/processed foods that inhibits bacterial or fungal growth, and that's why I'm able to eat it and have decent bowl control. I remember seeing pictures of some fast food burgers that they left out for like a year or something and it didn't decompose. Ironically, for normal/healthy people with "normal" gut biome status, they thrive on healthy and fermentable foods, while unhealthy people suffer when eating healthy fermentable foods because the healthy foods end up fermented by the pathological gut biome.

 

[PlantFruitTrees]

I have seen a study that the polyphenols in extra virgin olive oil make it as powerful as prescription antibiotics in the GI tract. Eating excessive olive oil while on a keto diet was what significantly contributed to my presumed microbiome disruption in 2020. I had been on a keto diet for six months and feeling fine, although it was probably weakening a portion of my gut flora, but I decided to eat half a cup of olive oil every day for lunch. Within a couple weeks I had developed brain fog and chronic fatigue, and it took me a couple weeks more to realize the olive oil was the cause and quit that while also quitting keto and returning to a balanced diet.

At first I thought I may have just imbalanced my fatty acids, and that did happen too, because although the symptoms have significantly lessened now, they ramp up if I overeat Omega 6 fats such as in sunflower seeds or eggs, and I eat ground flax seed to counteract that. I don't think the oil disrupted my gut flora entirely, as I have maintained excellent digestion and physical fitness, although I was eating and continue to eat mostly a raw foods diet including raw meat, and I think most people who tried the same would feel that meat is much more easily digested raw (freeze beef and pork first to guarantee it's parasite-free, but chicken and turkey don't have any human parasites). I also think the olive oil's antibiotic effect may have made room for a negative bacteria to overpopulate from the only meat that has ever made me sick in 20 years of eating raw, raw oysters, which happened about the same time as I started the olive oil.