This is an interesting angle on the gut microbiome knowledge that we are just now starting to explore and establish. It is also an intriguing sidebar to Jared Diamond's essay "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race" [1] (see this [2] discussion for a more balanced commentary that tackles the essay's actual points instead of the misleadingly sensationalist title).
There are some pretty sensationalist claims asserted for the gut microbiome at the moment, but it's early days yet so we're not certain what works for who, when, where, and why. I can say on a personal anecdote that after decades of not being able to eat the spicy foods that I enjoyed in childhood, I went through a course of probiotics for a year (they actually hang out here on HN), and now I can dial up the heat. It wasn't a controlled, double-blind study, but I'm sufficiently satisfied with my N=1 experiment to tentatively ascribe the result to the probiotics until new evidence arises to show me otherwise.
Is the probiotic you took the one from General Biotics? I was interested in trying them out but I never got any feedback on whether a one-month supply would be enough to notice any benefits or if it's something that requires a few months to kick in.
Yes indeed, that's who I used. I didn't notice any change after just a month, it took a year; I'm taking a break at the moment to see if any symptoms resurface. The original article for this thread mentioned that the mouse model the researchers are building indicates that successive generations of mice with weaker biomes did not improve after starting on a heavier-fiber diet (though long-term, who knows if it might start improving). Might there be a possibility that biome damage has a similar pathology, and reconstitution via probiotics takes an especially long time? Nobody knows at this point.
GB is not exactly cheap if you are on a student budget, so in the interest of full disclosure and crufty, messy, crowd sourcing pseudo-science, I'll offer some caveats of what else I was trying at the same time that might have also yielded my results. I tried two other brands of probiotic before settling on GB: Dr. Ohhira's and Bio-K+. Six months on Bio-K+ followed by two months on Dr. Ohhira's. At the same time, I went to a 20 mg / day maximum net carbohydrate, high-fat, moderate protein diet. I used testing strips to verify that I actually went into ketosis, and cycled to a 100 mg net carbohydrate day once 1-2 months to break weight loss plateaus. So before you "follow in my footsteps" and commit to a year of GB, be aware I had confounding factors that might also explain what happened to me (the ketogenic diet is the next candidate for a cause, but I've never heard of anyone being able to eat spicy foods again by starting that diet).
If I had the time and access, I'd pay to try bacteriotherapy using donor material from an athletic donor who likes spicy food. I suspect bacteriotherapy is good for more than just CDI.
The GB guys are super helpful and friendly, and you go month-to-month. I found suspending or cancelling super easy and hassle-free. So if you are curious to partake in your own N=1 experiment on gut microbiome reconstitution for just a month (though they themselves say don't count on any changes before within months), I encourage you to try it out and share your results.
There are some pretty sensationalist claims asserted for the gut microbiome at the moment, but it's early days yet so we're not certain what works for who, when, where, and why. I can say on a personal anecdote that after decades of not being able to eat the spicy foods that I enjoyed in childhood, I went through a course of probiotics for a year (they actually hang out here on HN), and now I can dial up the heat. It wasn't a controlled, double-blind study, but I'm sufficiently satisfied with my N=1 experiment to tentatively ascribe the result to the probiotics until new evidence arises to show me otherwise.
[1] http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02-the-worst-mistake-in...
[2] http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t...