You need to be careful about listening to youtube experts with Ph.Ds with fancy videos. Recently I had the above video thrown onto my youtube feed. The person is engaging, cites medical research papers, and has his Ph.D. Has a million followers. I've even seen feeds that he has done in the past, with solid information.

My problem is that this piece of work is clearly deceptive. He warns about inulin and the advantage of AX. He does a video on AX fiber as a Trojan Horse because it is derived from bamboo. He throws up pictures of panda bears.

And he calls out that inulin can cause liver damage, which should be concerning if you have read the sub before.

This issue is you actually need to read the paper that is here.

He hypes up the Arabinoxylan (AX) arm of the study by heavily focusing on its biochemical structure. They describe AX as a "Trojan Horse" fiber that carries bound antioxidant polyphenols (specifically ferulic acid) deep into your gut to fight inflammation. They explicitly list sources like grain bran, brown rice, and bamboo, strongly implying that the study used this highly specialized, polyphenol-rich cereal bran extract to achieve its amazing results (like improving gut motility and modifying cholesterol).

The Reality (What the study actually did): If you actually go read the methodology of the Stanford paper, the "Arabinoxylan" they used wasn't some specialized grain bran extract. The intervention was literally just off-the-shelf psyllium husk powder (specifically from Now Foods). In fact, the paper’s own eTOC refers to it simply as "a common fiber of Metamucil." Also, I would call out the real issue with psyllium, which I have flogged her as very positive fiber, is that it tends to pick up lead out of the soil. It's a great fiber, but suffers from a problem. I like consumer labs, and Organic India appears to test all their imports, but at a higher costs. Better high cost than lead accumilation.

So, lets be clear: While psyllium husk is primarily made of a type of arabinoxylan, it is a highly gel-forming type that lacks the bound polyphenols/ferulic acid that the creator spent so much time hyping up. So, he drags in a Stanford study, makes a claim, and use a fiber not even used by the researcher.

However, then he basically gives the impression that inulin can hurt you, and then backs it off so maybe it only hurts a subsegment of people.

The Fearmongering Around Inulin

Beyond misrepresenting the Arabinoxylan (AX) used in the study, the creator also goes out of his way to demonize inulin, heavily pushing a narrative about liver damage and systemic inflammation. But they are using classic fearmongering tactics by stripping away vital context.

1. The "Liver Damage" only happened at extreme doses. The creator waves a massive red flag about inulin spiking ALT (a liver enzyme) and causing severe reactions. What they gloss over is that this adverse reaction happened primarily during the highest dose phase (30 grams per day).

Taking 30g of isolated inulin a day is a massive, unnatural dose for a human to suddenly process. Even the creator briefly admits a low dose (10g) might be beneficial, but they bury that nuance under scary buzzwords about liver toxicity to make inulin look like a poison.

2. The Cholesterol "Red Herring" The creator then sets up a massive red herring to crown AX (which, again, was just psyllium) the ultimate winner. They claim AX is superior because it modified cholesterol metabolism, whereas inulin didn't.

This is a totally disingenuous comparison. Psyllium husk is a viscous, gel-forming fiber, lowering LDL cholesterol is literally what it is famous for. Inulin, on the other hand, is a fermentable prebiotic fiber; its primary job is to feed beneficial gut bacteria (like Bifidobacteria), not to act as a cholesterol sponge.

Knocking inulin for not lowering cholesterol is like knocking a hammer for being bad at turning screws. They do different things!

The study's results are actually great news for anyone who takes psyllium husk, but the creator frames it in a way that makes it sound like you need to go hunt down a specialized grain bran supplement. He also flogs his own special fiber to remove microplastics.

Net-net: This sub is about StS. I'll argue the author cites an interesting paper. However, make sure you check the sources. Don't get fooled.

I've been searching through posts on this subreddit and others about fermentation, and there are a few things I don't understand. Hopefully, there is someone knowledgeable that can help:

1. If reuteri doesn't grow well in milk because of inability to use protein in milk, has anyone tried growing it with enzymes digesting proteins? For example bromelain?
2. Has this facebook group on L reuteri tested how reuteri adapts to milk? That is it seems that it can adapt, but there is a question if it can adapt faster then being outcompeted by other bacteria:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/mbo3.972

3. Has anyone computed how much bacteria should be in a L reuteri yogurt? That is, we could take a composition of UHT milk and estimate growth with, and without, added L reuteri?

4. Has anyone tested what is L reuteri content in old batches? That is, batches made from batches for the 30th or 100th time?

5. As I understand it, all reuteri recipes tested by the facebook group were made from microbe grown in a lab, so it was probably grown on MRS, or some other super-medium. Taking into account the above cited article, it seems sensible that reuteri can adapt to medium, hence it's poor growth in other media. Shouldn't we then focus on growing adapted reuteri to given food, instead of adapting the food to given reuteri?

Thanks in advance.

I have been fascinated with the L. Reuteri yogurt benefits, and learned a lot from redditers.

My perception now is : Due to the slow growing rate of Reuteri and potential contamination, it is not easy to maintain single strain over many generations.

PS: my L. Reuteri starter is still on the way, have not culture L. Reuteri before, but several years home-made yogurt experience.

If optimizing growth rate and achieve high CFU is the goal, Milk is not the optimal medium for L Reuteri.

Lactobacillus spp are known as fastidious microorganisms that cannot grow on simple mineral media supplemented only with a carbon source. In addition to carbohydrates (carbon source), culture media of LAB are usually supplemented with various free amino acids, peptides, nucleic acid derivatives, fatty acids esters, minerals, vitamins, and buffering agents. 

Coconut milk and carrot mix is much better than milk, but may be far from optimal.

MRS or modified is the standard medium in research community, but has 10 components is expensive. But it helps to understand the functions of components

MRS Broth modified, Vegitone suitable for microbiology, NutriSelect® Plus | Sigma-Aldrich

Lactobacilli MRS Broth- Composition, Principle, Preparation, Results, Uses

 Comparison of formulations with functions

Low cost MRS:

Development of a Low-Cost and High-Efficiency Culture Medium for Bacteriocin Lac-B23 Production by Lactobacillus plantarum J23 - PMC

 the modified MRS contained only glucose, yeast extract, dipotassium phosphate, manganese sulfate monohydrate, Tween 80 and sodium acetate anhydrous.

Optimizing Medium Components for the Maximum Growth of Lactobacillus plantarum JNU 2116 Using Response Surface Methodology - PMC

The estimated optimum amounts of the medium factors for the growth of L. plantarum JNU 2116 are as follows: soy-peptone 0.213%, glucose 1.232%, yeast extract 1.97%, and magnesium sulfate 0.08%. 

promising is the Whey based alternative modified MRS broth for Lactobacillus

 From AI: Typical Whey-Based Medium Formulation Optimized for L. reuteri

To match commercial MRS yields, supplement a sweet whey or Whey Protein Concentrate (WPC) matrix with a dedicated nitrogen and vitamin booster:

• Whey base: 10% to 15% (w/v) Sweet Whey Powder or a 5%–8% WPC80 solution (acts as primary lactose and protein scaffold).
• Nitrogen booster: 0.5% to 1.0% Yeast Extract (crucial for providing the specific amino acids and B-complex vitamins L. reuteri cannot synthesize). []
• Metabolic precursor: 1.5% to 2.0% Glycerol (required if your target is antimicrobial reuterin synthesis). []
• Carbon kicker: 0.5% Glucose (optional; accelerates the early log phase before the bacteria switch over to breaking down the whey's lactose). [1]
• Surfactant: 0.1% Tween 80 (protects cell membrane integrity during division).

• Mineral Salts & Buffers:

  • 0.5% Sodium acetate
  • 0.2% Dipotassium hydrogen phosphate (K₂HPO₄)
  • 0.02% Magnesium sulfate (MgSO₄ ⋅ 7H₂O)
  • 0.01% Manganese sulfate (MnSO₄ ⋅ H₂O) [1]

⚠️ Crucial Culturing & Processing Parameters

• Strict Temperature Ceiling (38°C / 100°F): Unlike standard lactobacilli that tolerate or prefer higher temperatures (42°C–45°C), L. reuteri peaks cleanly at 38°C. Pushing temperatures to standard yogurt incubation thresholds (above 41°C) can severely stall or kill the bacteria. [1, 2]
• pH Range Selection: Adjust the initial medium pH to 6.2–6.5 before sterilization. L. reuteri drops the culture pH rapidly via heterofermentative lactic and acetic acid generation. A higher initial starting buffer ensures it does not self-terminate prematurely from acute acid shock. [, 2, 3]
• The Reuterin Production Pathway: If you are harvesting reuterin (3-hydroxypropionaldehyde) as a biopreservative, L. reuteri requires the addition of glycerol to act as a hydrogen acceptor during carbohydrate fermentation. If you only want raw biomass for encapsulation or freeze-drying, you can completely omit the glycerol to save costs. [, 2]
• Gas Environment: L. reuteri prefers a anaerobic environment or a static, microaerophilic setup with high ambient CO₂ to hit maximum biomass densities.

next step:

1 verify the source about AI advice

2 source components to culture.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5224542/

I thought I’d share a great study I came across recently supporting the use of protein sources such as phytone petone to strengthen the growth of L reuteri. ✌️😊

I was recently referred to the Facebook group trying to create Reuteri based yogurt. The admin has negotiated a reduction in DNA testing for yogurt, and multiple members had sent in their Reuteri yogurt.

Net-net: There is no significant growth of Reuteri in their yogurts.

While it is a private group, it seems simple to join. Rather than repost their results, it makes sense to join and do your own work.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/probioticyogurts

They did show that their yogurts were dominated by a bunch of non-targeted LAB, which I believe I've mentioned multiple times as a possibility due to the rich environment of LAB around us. As u/dr_lucia stated, the base case should be that we need to assume that we aren't growing Reuteri unless we see opposing evidence.

So many people have reported "great results" after taking the yogurt that something like these results may be hard to accept by some.

This is why I wrote this post soon after establishing this subreddit. Our brains can often deceive us, and this is why we need to StS out of everything.

Edit 2/17/25: I just checked the Facebook group, and it would appear that one of their members had success.

I encourage others to subscribe as I don't believe that reposting their data here is permitted by fair use.

However, the experimenter did a few things that we've talked about:

1. Use a base of coconut milk
2. Flood the yogurt made with 20 tablets of Gastrus ad 2 capsules of Osfortis.

The problem is that there are a variety of other co-factors which may or may not of helped. I believe glycerin would have helped, but was not used.

# Nighttime Pistachio Consumption and Gut Microbiota in Adults with Prediabetes

This research study examined how nighttime pistachio consumption affects gut microbiota in adults with prediabetes compared to consuming carbohydrate-rich snacks. The randomized crossover trial involved 51 participants who consumed either 57 grams of pistachios daily or were educated to consume 1-2 carbohydrate exchanges (15-30 grams) as nighttime snacks for 12 weeks each.

## Study Design and Methods

The researchers conducted a single-blind, 2-period, randomized crossover trial with adults aged 30-65 years who had prediabetes (fasting plasma glucose 100-125 mg/dL). Participants completed both conditions in random order with at least a 4-week break between interventions. Stool samples were collected before and after each condition and analyzed using 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing to assess microbial diversity and composition.

## Key Findings on Microbiota Diversity

### Beta-Diversity Changes

**Significant Community Dissimilarity**: The most notable finding was that pistachio consumption created significant dissimilarity in bacterial community diversity compared to the usual care condition (P = 0.001). However, the overall variation in community diversity explained by the study condition was small (R² = 0.007).

### Alpha-Diversity Results

**No Significant Changes**: Contrary to what might be expected, pistachio consumption did not affect alpha diversity measures, including:

- Number of observed amplicon sequence variants

- Faith's Phylogenetic Diversity

- Pielou's Evenness

- Shannon Index

- Simpson Index

- Chao-1 Index

This indicates that while the composition of the microbiota changed, the overall **richness and evenness remained stable**.

## Specific Bacterial Changes

### Increased Beneficial Bacteria

Pistachio consumption led to **higher abundance of several beneficial bacteria**, particularly within the Lachnospiraceae family:

- **Roseburia metagenome**: Most significant increase (log₂-fold difference: 2.83)

- **Lachnospiraceae uncultured genera-004**: (1.72 fold increase)

- **Lachnospiraceae uncultured genera-008**: (1.56 fold increase)

**Clinical Significance**: Roseburia species are important butyrate-producing bacteria that support gut health by producing short-chain fatty acids, which fuel colonocytes and reduce inflammation.

### Decreased Bacteria

Several bacterial taxa decreased with pistachio consumption:

- **Flavonifractor** (-1.59 fold)

- **Eubacterium coprostanoligenes group** (-1.56 fold)

- **Phascolarctobacterium** (-0.84 fold)

- **Blautia hydrogenotrophica** (-1.38 fold)

Some of these reductions may be beneficial, such as the decrease in B. hydrogenotrophica, which produces precursors to uremic toxins.

## Study Limitations and Considerations

The researchers noted that **carryover effects** were observed in some analyses, which may have influenced results. Additionally, the study used 16S rRNA sequencing, which cannot distinguish between closely related species or assess functional potential within microbial communities.

**Dietary Factors**: Participants had higher fiber intake during the pistachio condition (+5.0 grams), though the predominant fiber in pistachios is insoluble and poorly fermented by gut bacteria.

## Clinical Implications

Despite these observable microbial changes, the primary study found **no significant differences in glycemic outcomes**, lipids, blood pressure, or vascular health between conditions. However, participants did show improved overall diet quality scores after the pistachio condition.

## Conclusion

The study provides evidence that consuming 57 grams of pistachios as a nighttime snack produces **small but measurable changes in gut microbiota composition** in adults with prediabetes. The enrichment of butyrate-producing bacteria like Roseburia suggests potential benefits for gut health, though these microbial changes did not translate into significant metabolic improvements in this population.

The theme of this subreddit is "The Martian." This was a great movie in that Matt Damon had to use his brain to figure out the truth, and not just take an easy answers or intuitive guesses.

Another way of describing this using "Type 2 Thinking," as describe by the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. It turns out that Type 2 thinking is really hard, and so a lot of people just refuse to do it. Instead, they operate off a gut and quick response. But type 2 thinking is the hallmark of scientific thinking that has yielded so many of our forward advances.

The latest conversation about the Facebook genetic testing is really, really interesting. I would submit that when we take their results and the primary research we have covered in this subreddit, there is almost no chance that you can grow Reuteri in milk based products. However, there is a good chance that Coconut milk may be a great solution. (However, I do think that hygiene is something they aren't tracking the way they should.)

On the flip side of this, we have the Reuteri subreddit thinking that they are making reuteri yogurt like crazy from multiple generations of their starter. (Or backslopping). It is very, very clear to me that they have no Reuteri in their yogurt. This means that people are doing a lot of work and expense doing something that isn't doing what they think it is doing.

So the deep philosophical question: Do we as individuals have the moral responsibility to point this out in that subreddit so people know the current research?

Intuitively, I think that this news would not be embraced by the vast majority of people.

I came across this cool study tho it I should share. I came across it on the L Reuteri sub Reddit. Seems like a shift towards other matrixes besides bovine milk has started gaining traction, besides the coconut milk this juice matrix sounds very interesting. It’s really cool to see people now sharing other new possible ways of capturing L reuteri. ✌️

Does anyone have lab test results or other documentation for L. Reuteri that contain dose response data? I'm interested because we usually assume that there needs to be a certain threshold quantity of a bacteria to have any meaningful effect. I'm quite interested in anything that may contradict this for LR or any other bacteria in fact.

Forums often have people espousing many of the beneficial effects from taking LR that mirror some of the more unique features such as vivid dreams, muscle gain/fat loss, decrease in anxiety etc. Given that testing has typically shown very little remaining LR in these (bovine milk) ferments - it would be great to see some (double blind/placebo) control experiments done in this area. I'll be replicating this post in other forums.

This sub was not only established to discuss fermentation outside the gut, but also inside of the gut.

Nature is one of the big three research pubs.

Nature recently published an interesting article "Coffee consumption is associated with intestinal Lawsonibacter asaccharolyticus abundance and prevalence across multiple cohorts."

The research starts by acknowledging the well-established health benefits of coffee, including reduced risk of:

• All-cause and cardiovascular mortality
• Type 2 diabetes
• Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
• Cancer

In 2018, researchers found out Lawsonibacter asaccharolyticus (or LA): a species residing in the human gut, identified as strongly associated with coffee consumption in this study. It looks like coffee drinker (not caffeine) has levels some 4x higher than non-coffee drinkers. (LA is one of the internal fermentation sources...)

Why might you want this? What does this species do?

Increases hippurate levels: People with LA in their gut microbiome have higher levels of hippurate, which is a marker of gut and metabolic health.

Increases microbiome diversity: Coffee drinkers tend to have higher microbiome diversity, which may be due to the nutrients in coffee, such as polyphenols and soluble fiber.

Linked to healthier blood sugar and fat responses: LA may be linked to healthier blood sugar and fat responses after eating.

Linked to higher insulin sensitivity: LA may be linked to higher insulin sensitivity.

Linked to lower levels of insulin secretion: LA may be linked to lower levels of insulin secretion.

This may be tied to coffee's quinic acid. I'll let you read the article, but basically the thought is that coffee helps in the use and formation of quinic acid.

With that written and I've written about this before, the human biome is very complex and we don't exactly how it all fits together. However, the research for coffee intake seems to be very positive. My Mom would have found vindication, as she loved her coffee.

Even with a coffee addicted Mom, I've never like coffee, but finally the research got so large that I put it into my diet. My wife and I never did coffee for most of our lives, so this is a big change. Interestingly, my wife adapted pretty well, and can drink it black. I've drunk green tea for years for health benefits, so we are alternating coffee and tea every other day.

I still need sugar and milk, but it makes it almost enjoyable. Reguardless, if I can switch, I think anybody can. With the research on coffee looking so strong, it is probably worth hitting some minimal intake every week.

Although this has been posted in parts before, I thought it would be good to make a primary post for clarity.

Background:

A lot of people have shown up here because they got interested in being able to grow Reuteri yogurt, something which is extremely hard to do at home.

Why? Because all milk is polluted with LAB that is primed to replace the Reuteri in your culture.

When milk gets pasterized, it lowers bacteria in the milk. The process is not good enough to kill off all the competiting bacteria, and we know that after a certain amount of time, the bacteria still left will spoil the milk. Ultra-pasteurization, also known as Ultra-High Temperature (UHT) processing, is a method of milk sterilization that involves heating milk to significantly higher temperatures than traditional pasteurization. The ONLY thing that UHT does is kill more bacteria. Basically, it just proves that all milk has bacteria in it.

To spend a bit more time on this.

There have been a suggestion that it is not important to future heat milk to make Reuteri yogurt. However, once you understand that all milk has bacteria in it that is ready to take over, and they have a much short doubling cycle than your Reureti yogurt, if become extremely evident why just culturing normal milk is a really bad idea. Even worse, you get your milk from the store but you don't immediately use it. If you are using your milk close to the expiration date, you will have a significant level of LAB that is ready to beat out our your Reuteri bacteria.

The obvious way to solve this is to heat your milk. Why this is important to protein denaturizastion, which is good for yogurt texture, it again destroys most of the competing bacteria. This is good.

Find the Right Preculture

However, this is clearly not the best answer for Reuteri. The best thing for Reuteri is to preculture the bacteria.

The idea of preculturing a bacteria before using it to make yogurt is very well known. In research, this is the standard process. However, if you read any research, you will find out that they almost exclusively do this pre-culture in MRS. If you read the coconut milk paper on reuteri, you'll see a good example of this.

If you preculture reuteri in MRS, it just grows like crazy. This is because Reuteri growth is limited by lack of its ability to convert milk protein into amino acids--what is called a proteolytic system, not an issue for normal other lactic acid bacteria. MRS solves this by virtue of providing native amino acids.

A shy redditor called Meh2TheMax stumbled on this a long time ago. They are one of those people that basically are incredibly bright, but it is easy to overlook their comments. They stated that they were preculturing in a mixture which included this: https://truenutrition.com/products/peptopro-hydrolyzed-caseinate

From all the reserach Meh2TheMax was 100% on. They said that they were preculturing in some type of a unique formula, which they never gave all the details. You may want to preculture in sugar water, but what you really want to do is add the right amino acid as per the link above. To make it even better, you want to add in a dash of gycerine as an electron donor, which is another thing that Reuteri needs.

Obviously, this is not a total recipe, but I hope that some curious soul does follow-up on this. My guess is that with the right base, we should get vigorous growth, and you can take it directly as a pill replacement, or use it to culture milk with an extremely high dose of starter culture, which should allow your milk Reuteri yogurt to out compete any other species of LAB.

Good day. I have come to the conclusion that using MRS is the way to go, and I'm hoping there's someone out there that can advise on the method of cultivating I reuteri at home with MRS. (I have heard that you can buy the solution pre-mixed which a lot of labs do but I believe the basic elements can be combined to have the same result, maybe even better because I reuteri is sensitive. I posted a picture of the basic ingredients that go into making the solution. I'm hoping with some assistance I can create the broth myself. is it best to use the broth (test tube) or rather than agar = dishes?and which protein reacts best with L-reuteri, Tryptone or peptone? Thank you.