Gut bacteria "may be obesity weapon"

Started by Agramon, September 05, 2013, 05:05:23 PM

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Mermaid

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. :)
A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities â€" all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. -TR

SilentFutility

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

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.

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/
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SilentFutility

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/

"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.

aitm

has the makings of a great reality show. fat and skinny in a cage, start eating each others poop....what could go wrong?
A humans desire to live is exceeded only by their willingness to die for another. Even god cannot equal this magnificent sacrifice. No god has the right to judge them.-first tenant of the Panotheust

Colanth

Afflicting the comfortable for 70 years.
Science builds skyscrapers, faith flies planes into them.

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.

Agramon

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
"And, tricked by our own early dream
And need of solace, we grew self-deceived,
Our making soon our maker did we deem,
And what we had imagined we believed."
- Thomas Hardy

hillbillyatheist

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.
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Hydra009

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

SilentFutility

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.

aileron

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.
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