QuoteBacteria living in our guts seem to be affecting our waistlines and harnessing them could lead to new ways of shedding the pounds, US research suggests.
The human body is teeming with thousands of species of microbes that affect health.
A study showed that transplanting gut bacteria from obese people into mice led to the animals gaining weight, while bacteria from lean people kept them slim.
The findings were published in Science.
Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine, Missouri, took gut bacteria from pairs of twins - one obese, one thin.
The bacteria were then put into mice which had grown up in completely sterile environments and had no gut bacteria of their own.
Mice with the obese twin's bacteria became heavier and put on more fat than mice given bacteria from a lean twin - and it was not down to the amount of food being eaten.
There were differences in the number and types of bacteria species from the lean and obese twin.
Overall it seemed those from a lean twin were better at breaking down fibre into short-chain fatty acids. It meant the body was taking up more energy from the gut, but the chemicals were preventing fatty tissue from building up and increased the amount of energy being burned.
One of the researchers, Prof Jeffrey Gordon, told the BBC's Science in Action programme: "We don't dine alone, we dine with trillions of friends - we have to consider the microbes which live in our gut."
However, the diet was also important for creating the right conditions for the lean twin's bacteria to flourish. A bacterial obesity therapy seems unlikely to work alongside a a diet of greasy burgers.
Keeping both sets of mice in the same cage kept them both lean if they were fed a low-fat, high-fibre diet. Mice are coprophagic, meaning they eat each other's droppings, and the lean twin's bacteria were passed into the mice which started with bacteria that should have made them obese.
However, a high-fat, low-fibre diet meant the mice still piled on the pounds.
Human therapies?
A human obesity treatment is unlikely to use transplants of thousands of species of bacteria from lean people's guts as it carries the risk of also transferring infectious diseases.
Instead a search for the exact mix of bacteria which benefit weight - and the right foods to promote their growth - is more likely.
Prof Gordon said the next steps in the field would be "trying to figure out how general these effects are, what diet ingredients may promote their beneficial activities and to look forward to a time when food and the value of food is considered in light of the microbes that live in our gut - that foods will have to be designed from the inside out as well as from the outside in."
Commenting on the research, Prof Julian Parkhill, from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, said he expected a future when manipulating bacteria was a part of obesity treatment.
"There's a lot of work to do, but this is proof of concept that bacteria in the gut can modulate obesity in adults, but it is diet-dependent," he said.
He added that changing bacteria was a promising field for other diseases.
He told the BBC: "It's an exciting new area, but I think we need to be careful in promoting it as a cure-all.
"It's clear in specific areas - inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, Crohn's - the microbiome is going to be important."
Link (//http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23970219)
Kind of sounds like we have been hearing all along. "Eat more fiber and stay away from fatty foods." But, I guess we could throw in the idea of giving more rimmers to skinny people. :-k I'm not sure, but I kind of like the idea. :-D
My brother has Crohn's disease, but he's already slim.
It's just another case of people looking for a "slim pill". As the research showed, having the slim bacteria, but eating a high-fat diet, won't accomplish much. If being slim means changing the way we eat, America will continue to be an obese nation.
Quote from: "Colanth"It's just another case of people looking for a "slim pill". As the research showed, having the slim bacteria, but eating a high-fat diet, won't accomplish much. If being slim means changing the way we eat, America will continue to be an obese nation.
If this research proves accurate, you might be able to take probiotics before/during a diet to enable you to lose weight more efficiently. It also might help reduce the GI issues associated with major diet switch, not to mention the possibilities with GI diseases.
But there's that word again - diet. Most [s:12fs0z80]morons[/s:12fs0z80] Americans want to just take a pill, then eat anything, and any amount, they want, and still lose weight.
How many people still smoke? Giving up burgers is just about as difficult. (I've given both up, so it's not just a guess.)
As a fat guy I can tell you losing weight is not easy.
skinny people seem to think we just set around shoving twinkies down our throats all day. when in truth two people can eat the same things and do the same amount of exercise and yet one gain weight and the other don't.
on top of that dealing with hunger is a bitch.
trying to lose weight is like trying to quit dope, only you need a little bit of a hit every day to stay alive, and you're surrounded by mountains of dope and everybody uses.
and if that ain't enough the body has all kinds of tricks up its sleeve to keep you fat.
you cut your diet down, and suddenly your body drops its metabolism while jacking up the hunger hormones because it thinks a famine has hit.
there's a reason like 97% of overweight people gain it back after 5 years.
so yeah I'm one of those dumb americans waiting on a pill.
that's not to say I'm not doing stuff already like taking walks and trying to cut back, but still, they come out with a pill that works I'll be all over that shit.
http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/fat- ... o-science/ (http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/fat-officially-incurable-according-to-science/)
Quote from: "hillbillyatheist"so yeah I'm one of those dumb americans waiting on a pill.
Don't get me wrong. I exercise as much as someone in constant pain can. And my daily caloric intake would probably make a large mouse suffer hunger pangs. But the majority of the terminally stupid seem to think that the reason that science hasn't come out with a pill to {make you thin|make you understand any number of really difficult things|make you pretty/handsome|etc.} is a conspiracy of some kind. But they'd scream bloody murder if science DID come out with a pill to make you thin, but 1 out of every 2 million people who took it died, and claim that science doesn't really work.
oh yeah I'm with you there.
I hear some cool stuff is being turned over in the labs that may cure obesity within 5-10 years. I hope so. if it doesn't make it past phase III clinical trials, I won't blame it on any bullshit conspiracies though. LOL
in the meantime I walk two miles a day. hell yesterday I bumped it up to 2.5 miles. I've read it does you good even if you're overweight.
When I read the words "obesity weapon", I imagined a lard-firing cannon.
But this is cool too. I guess.
Quote from: "hillbillyatheist"As a fat guy I can tell you losing weight is not easy.
skinny people seem to think we just set around shoving twinkies down our throats all day. when in truth two people can eat the same things and do the same amount of exercise and yet one gain weight and the other don't.
on top of that dealing with hunger is a bitch.
trying to lose weight is like trying to quit dope, only you need a little bit of a hit every day to stay alive, and you're surrounded by mountains of dope and everybody uses.
and if that ain't enough the body has all kinds of tricks up its sleeve to keep you fat.
you cut your diet down, and suddenly your body drops its metabolism while jacking up the hunger hormones because it thinks a famine has hit.
there's a reason like 97% of overweight people gain it back after 5 years.
so yeah I'm one of those dumb americans waiting on a pill.
that's not to say I'm not doing stuff already like taking walks and trying to cut back, but still, they come out with a pill that works I'll be all over that shit.
http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/fat- ... o-science/ (http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/fat-officially-incurable-according-to-science/)
That's the thing that a lot of people fail to recognise though...a healthy diet is not the same thing as not eating and going hungry all the time. You shouldn't be hungry, at all.
If you eat good food, complex carbs for energy and to stop you from being hungry, avoid sugars and eating only when you begin to get hungry and not at other times, and get lots of sleep (ie. be healthy and not eat crap) you will tend towards a healthy weight combined with an active lifestyle.
During a change to a healthy diet your body's metabolism shouldn't slow down it should speed up. If you eat smaller meals more regularly and eat complex carbs and fruits and stop eating as soon as you are not hungry, not whn you are stuffed full, your metabolism will be faster then if you eat huge meals and are inactive.
If you are provoking a "famine" response from your body you are not eating healthily.
Good luck.
I actually think it's very interesting to focus on the ecology of gut flora as it relates to body condition. They are lessons that will serve us, I suspect. Knowledge is power.
It's hard to curtail your food intake when you don't have that positive feedback. Knowing why, at least to me, would be empowering. There are so many crackpots like Dr. Oz out there, it's hard to glean what is fact from what is a sales pitch. I like this information.
Quote from: "Graceless"When I read the words "obesity weapon", I imagined a lard-firing cannon.
But this is cool too. I guess.
Is it? It sounds too messy for my household, but hey, I don't judge.
Quote from: "Mermaid"I actually think it's very interesting to focus on the ecology of gut flora as it relates to body condition. They are lessons that will serve us, I suspect. Knowledge is power.
It's hard to curtail your food intake when you don't have that positive feedback. Knowing why, at least to me, would be empowering. There are so many crackpots like Dr. Oz out there, it's hard to glean what is fact from what is a sales pitch. I like this information.
It seems weird to me that gut bacteria research - or at least its connection to overall health - is a (at least as far as I know) recent line of inquiry. Given the massive variety of microbes in our guts, one would have thought it would have been looked into earlier.
Quote from: "SilentFutility"Quote from: "hillbillyatheist"As a fat guy I can tell you losing weight is not easy.
skinny people seem to think we just set around shoving twinkies down our throats all day. when in truth two people can eat the same things and do the same amount of exercise and yet one gain weight and the other don't.
on top of that dealing with hunger is a bitch.
trying to lose weight is like trying to quit dope, only you need a little bit of a hit every day to stay alive, and you're surrounded by mountains of dope and everybody uses.
and if that ain't enough the body has all kinds of tricks up its sleeve to keep you fat.
you cut your diet down, and suddenly your body drops its metabolism while jacking up the hunger hormones because it thinks a famine has hit.
there's a reason like 97% of overweight people gain it back after 5 years.
so yeah I'm one of those dumb americans waiting on a pill.
that's not to say I'm not doing stuff already like taking walks and trying to cut back, but still, they come out with a pill that works I'll be all over that shit.
http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/fat- ... o-science/ (http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/fat-officially-incurable-according-to-science/)
That's the thing that a lot of people fail to recognise though...a healthy diet is not the same thing as not eating and going hungry all the time. You shouldn't be hungry, at all.
If you eat good food, complex carbs for energy and to stop you from being hungry, avoid sugars and eating only when you begin to get hungry and not at other times, and get lots of sleep (ie. be healthy and not eat crap) you will tend towards a healthy weight combined with an active lifestyle.
During a change to a healthy diet your body's metabolism shouldn't slow down it should speed up. If you eat smaller meals more regularly and eat complex carbs and fruits and stop eating as soon as you are not hungry, not whn you are stuffed full, your metabolism will be faster then if you eat huge meals and are inactive.
If you are provoking a "famine" response from your body you are not eating healthily.
Good luck.
certainly no arguments about eating healthy food.
but that still doesn't change the fact that people can have biological reasons that make it easier or harder to achieve.
you can have two people start eating right, and exercising and one of them drops weight like they got cancer and the other gains weight, and has to work 3 times harder than the first one.
so you can have two people with similar willpower, but one fails because he has to work twice as hard as the first to achieve their goals. So I think people should be sympathetic to this fact and not stereotype all fat people as gluttons eating twinkies till it comes out their ears.
but that said, certainly nobody should use this as an excuse to eat bad food and not exercise.
I'm morbidly obese right now, been most my life and and so far, I've been lucky, I don't have diabetes, high cholesterol or anything like that. I know folks in their teens with diabetes and shit.
why am I better off? my guess is because I walk every day. I can't drive. and walking does alot more than many people think. check this out.
[youtube:3o0fm8lx]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUaInS6HIGo[/youtube:3o0fm8lx]
Quote from: "Agramon"Quote from: "Mermaid"I actually think it's very interesting to focus on the ecology of gut flora as it relates to body condition. They are lessons that will serve us, I suspect. Knowledge is power.
It's hard to curtail your food intake when you don't have that positive feedback. Knowing why, at least to me, would be empowering. There are so many crackpots like Dr. Oz out there, it's hard to glean what is fact from what is a sales pitch. I like this information.
It seems weird to me that gut bacteria research - or at least its connection to overall health - is a (at least as far as I know) recent line of inquiry. Given the massive variety of microbes in our guts, one would have thought it would have been looked into earlier.
Yeah, I agree. It seems that until pretty recently, we didn't really consider the ecology of the gut flora despite yogurt being relatively popular, and despite fecal, cud and rumen fluid transplants being a common (and effective!) therapy for sick cattle. I think we didn't really think of ourselves as a fermenting animal like a cow, but we obviously are.
It is funny that we never thought about it despite a relatively decent knowledge of bacterial metabolism. Ecological balance of gut microbes is a super interesting topic to me, actually. The chemical signals that occur in there are mind-blowingly complex, and it all changes on a daily basis depending on what you are feeding your gut bacteria. Do they crave foods and then, in turn, make us crave foods? If you really think about it, that makes a whole lot of sense that gut bacteria have evolved to function this way. If they don't get what they need, they croak and that's it for them.
I had an interesting experience recently. Within the last 2 years, I have dropped 60 lbs by limiting calorie intake. If I was given a bank account of 1500 calories a day, I was going to have to be careful what I ate or I'd be hungry. Instead of eating a smallish bowl of pasta and blowing my dietary wad all at once and being hungry for the rest of the day, I instead chose to eat piles of greens the size of my head and some lean protein. Instead of eating a cup of mashed potatoes or rice, I could eat three cups of mashed butternut squash. After a while, I started to prefer what I was eating and dislike that food that I had sort of given up. So I think it makes sense that through my own gluttony and fear of being hungry, I managed to cause a shift somewhere in there, and now I have a different population in there that is demanding collard greens and spinach instead of lasagna.
It also makes me wonder about animals who have no immunity and who live in a completely sterile environment with no gut flora. Would they have cravings?
So currently I am feeding my gut bacteria chocolate and later on, I will be feeding them Guinness and a burger. :)
Quote from: "hillbillyatheist"certainly no arguments about eating healthy food.
but that still doesn't change the fact that people can have biological reasons that make it easier or harder to achieve.
you can have two people start eating right, and exercising and one of them drops weight like they got cancer and the other gains weight, and has to work 3 times harder than the first one.
so you can have two people with similar willpower, but one fails because he has to work twice as hard as the first to achieve their goals. So I think people should be sympathetic to this fact and not stereotype all fat people as gluttons eating twinkies till it comes out their ears.
but that said, certainly nobody should use this as an excuse to eat bad food and not exercise.
I'm morbidly obese right now, been most my life and and so far, I've been lucky, I don't have diabetes, high cholesterol or anything like that. I know folks in their teens with diabetes and shit.
why am I better off? my guess is because I walk every day. I can't drive. and walking does alot more than many people think. check this out.
Writer posted a YouTube video (//http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUaInS6HIGo)
I completely agree, everybody is different.
However, with a healthy, active lifestyle you will tend towards a healthy body, it might just take a bit longer to get there. Those who say that they "can't lose weight" are completely and utterly wrong in 99.9% of cases, and are just making excuses to justify not fully committing to trying.
Quote from: "SilentFutility"However, with a healthy, active lifestyle you will tend towards a healthy body, it might just take a bit longer to get there. Those who say that they "can't lose weight" are completely and utterly wrong in 99.9% of cases, and are just making excuses to justify not fully committing to trying.
considering weight loss attempts have a 97% failure rate when checked after 5 years, I'd say its a bit more than that. you're basically just saying fat people are all lazy when many are trying harder than you think. the amount of sheer will power it takes to lose weight is breathtaking. I've read that food is as addictive as drugs. only you're surrounded by that drug daily and need a hit every day to live. I'm not saying its impossible, and I agree folks should eat right and exercise. I just think you should keep in mind that its a very hard thing to do, and thus fat people shouldn't be stereotyped as lazy twinkie eating gluttons. and when some of us wish to god a pill would be invented to make this shit easier, that people would understand.
check out this article and follow the links he gives. I think he's exaggerating just a bit for comedic effect but there's alot of truth in what he's saying.
http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/fat- ... o-science/ (http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/fat-officially-incurable-according-to-science/)
Quote from: "hillbillyatheist"Quote from: "SilentFutility"However, with a healthy, active lifestyle you will tend towards a healthy body, it might just take a bit longer to get there. Those who say that they "can't lose weight" are completely and utterly wrong in 99.9% of cases, and are just making excuses to justify not fully committing to trying.
considering weight loss attempts have a 97% failure rate when checked after 5 years, I'd say its a bit more than that. you're basically just saying fat people are all lazy when many are trying harder than you think. the amount of sheer will power it takes to lose weight is breathtaking. I've read that food is as addictive as drugs. only you're surrounded by that drug daily and need a hit every day to live. I'm not saying its impossible, and I agree folks should eat right and exercise. I just think you should keep in mind that its a very hard thing to do, and thus fat people shouldn't be stereotyped as lazy twinkie eating gluttons. and when some of us wish to god a pill would be invented to make this shit easier, that people would understand.
check out this article and follow the links he gives. I think he's exaggerating just a bit for comedic effect but there's alot of truth in what he's saying.
http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/fat- ... o-science/ (http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/fat-officially-incurable-according-to-science/)
"the amount of sheer will power it takes to lose weight is breathtaking."I agree, but that doesn't mean that it is medically impossible, and note my words "fully committing". Losing weight and staying healthy is a complete and total overhaul of your lifestyle, which is probably very difficult for most people to effect.
has the makings of a great reality show. fat and skinny in a cage, start eating each others poop....what could go wrong?
Two guys, one cage?
I imagine starving people in third-world countries will be overjoyed to hear we have found yet another way for people to eat even more in the west without getting fat.
Considering I've gone from 78kg (172lbs) to 74kg (163lbs) in a matter of 3-4 months without exercise and without trying to lose weight, it's hard for me to imagine it can be very hard to lose weight for anyone, even after considering the fact that people's biology differs slightly. I guess people with for example Downs Syndrome does get fat easier, but even for them it's possible to avoid getting fat through sensible diets (diet as in what you tend to eat) and exercise, so to me it seems more like a question about how much you want to be healthy or not.
Quote from: "sonlun"I imagine starving people in third-world countries will be overjoyed to hear we have found yet another way for people to eat even more in the west without getting fat.
Considering I've gone from 78kg (172lbs) to 74kg (163lbs) in a matter of 3-4 months without exercise and without trying to lose weight, it's hard for me to imagine it can be very hard to lose weight for anyone, even after considering the fact that people's biology differs slightly. I guess people with for example Downs Syndrome does get fat easier, but even for them it's possible to avoid getting fat through sensible diets (diet as in what you tend to eat) and exercise, so to me it seems more like a question about how much you want to be healthy or not.
> Personal experience ----> Applies to nearly everyone else
sonlun if you're just dropping the pounds without even doing anything I'd go see a doctor.
usually to lose weight people have to cut back on food, change what foods they eat and engage in exercise. and even then it takes the effort of summiting everest only to find you just got past a tiny speed bump and down hill.
and if you are somehow just losing weight with no effort and no illness causing it, count yourself lucky.
don't be like mitt rMoney who thinks he got his cash just by his own gumption and that anybody can do it.
sorry man it ain't that simple. there are biological, psychological, and sociological issues that get in the way for most people and make it extremely difficult.
Quote from: "sonlun"Considering I've gone from 78kg (172lbs) to 74kg (163lbs) in a matter of 3-4 months without exercise and without trying to lose weight
(//http://www.healthforthewholeself.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/tapeworm-diet.jpg)
I maintain a healthy weight and I eat silly amounts of food for my size. I'm 70something kilos, and I eat 3-4 full, cooked meals a day, with snacks inbetween. I usually have a jacket potato with salad and meat for lunch, or something equally filling, and I need a sizeable snack between lunch and dinner. NONE of what I eat isn't good food though. It is all natural, all home-cooked or prepared from scratch, and I make sure it is healthy and gives me lots of nutrients etc. I need to eat this much because I do quite a bit of exercise and I am constantly hungry. I am slowly losing fat as a result of this exercise and diet.
It is extremely difficult, but I think what is most often overlooked is that people need to learn to listen to their own body, and only eat when they are hungry, and never ignore hunger either. When people are hungry, they should eat proper food. Exercise is also very important, not only for weight loss but also physical and mental well-being.
I realise that this is all anecdotal but a huge majority of people I know have truly awful eating habits and simply cannot fathom why they aren't making progress.
Well, of course bacteria can help a person lose weight. A nice case of salmonella will help drop a few pounds. A pleasant round of listeriosis could aid a person in shedding dozens of pounds.