| Human Gut microbial communities linked to obesity.
Posted: 12/8/2008 6:56:15 PM | From today's science digest:
when the study's lead author Peter Turnbaugh, a graduate student working in Gordon's lab, sequenced the microbial community DNA, or microbiome, of a subset of obese and lean twin pairs, he found that obese individuals had an increased representation of nearly 300 bacterial genes, many of which are devoted to extracting calories from food and processing nutrients. This new evidence supports Gordon's earlier research in mice that established a link between obesity and the efficiency of energy harvest from the diet by gut bacteria."
What if it was less about genetics, how much someone eats or exercises, and more about the community of symbiotic bacteria that exists in our intestines, and helps us to digest the foods we eat?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081203092433.htm | |
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| Human Gut microbial communities linked to obesity.
Posted: 12/8/2008 8:47:24 PM | Perhaps it is a combination of factors, including bacteria. More efficient bacteria would seem to mean you would need to eat far less than the average person to get your nutrients. But one is used to eating a certain amount of food and it is psychologically unpleasant to cut back.
I think a far more likely candidate would be the amount of overprossessed ,and high fat ,high sugar ,high calorie ,lo nutritional food in our diet which leaves us with the feeling of still being hungry and missing something. (which is true) | |
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| Human Gut microbial communities linked to obesity.
Posted: 12/8/2008 9:19:48 PM | Of course, its ALL those FACTORS. It really depends on what medical PICTURE one presents with. Initially, we can say it is GENETIC and as life goes on things like LACK of EXERCISE and DIET can inflame the problem.
Mind you, i do NOT think that GENETICS is the ROOT of DISEASE--instead that honor goes to NUTRITION (imho). First comes NUTRITION, then comes GENETICS. Or said another way first comes NUTRITION DEFICIENCY; then comes GENETIC DEFORMITY (or disease). The world of medicine comes at this backwards (putting GENETICS before NUTRITION when its actually the other way round in terms of getting at ETIOLOGY.
In effect, most of our DIS-EASES come not from poor GENETICS/GENES but from poor NUTRITION (aka BAD EATING HABITS)! Especially, during PREGNANCY. Yes, GENES figure in the equation--but only after they have been COMPROMISED from BAD nutrition. After all, GENES are nothing but miniature ORGANS that can be affected like any other Organ from LACK of Good NUTRIENTS!
RESPECTS! | |
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| Human Gut microbial communities linked to obesity.
Posted: 12/8/2008 9:28:11 PM | Its symbiosis. The more you eat, the more bacteria and bacteria types your body will support, and these can also pre-digest some parts of your food for you. (This means we are all "eating" bacteria poop! And bacteria are eating ours!)
Anyway, might this include yeasts? Our food industry has created strains of yeast that are like super-yeast--called fast-acting yeasts--that mutliply quicker and are easier to store and harder to kill off. These are used in brewing beers and making all the high-carb breads and junk foods we eat so much of.
Eating lots of foods made with these yeasts can cause us to harbor much of this yeast, which requires simple sugars and starches to survive. After eating all the available sugars our bodies start to crave sugar and breads because that is what the yeasts eat the easiest, and the harder to digest stuff is what we eat less of, and so have fewer bacteria that help to digest that.
Its hard to kill off all of these yeasts because even if just a few remain, they multiply very quickly and re-populate us again. Yeasts also create a mycelium, which is long tendrils that grow roots into our tissues, making them harder to eliminate. Leaving us feeling depleted even though we are eating more.
We are creating bacteria in labs that can eat paper, digest pollutants, create chemicals and drugs, and even glow and produce energy. Bacteria can change to meet the environment it is in. Our bodies are made up of many pounds of bacteria--so whatever environment we expose them to, they will adapt to. If we eat junk food, the bacteria will eat it quickly (helping digest it for us) leaving us craving more of the same type of food. If we eat a wider variety of foods, the bacteria will adapt to those foods.
Obesity is what happens when we Don't use the energy we gain from foods. It gets stored instead. Its very possible that the reason the material gets stored is that it is difficult to do anything else with it.
Preservatives work well because they inhibit bacterial growth. Well-preserved foods can't be easily metabolized by our bodies into energy--so the body simply stores it as an inefficient energy source for use later on when there is nothing else to use.
Preserved food is preserved from our use, too, not just bacteria. So if our gut flora can't digest it, our bodies aren't likely to be able to either--since the digestion processes are similar.
This is true of all food-like substances that get added to packaged foods--colorings, flavorings, dough conditioners, artificial sweeteners--they are things our bodies might not be "harmed" by, but might also not know what to DO with--if it can't be recognized by the liver or kidneys for removal from the body, it just ends up staying there forever. The body just wraps it into fat and puts it into storage, just like we do with stuff that we put in the basement and never use again. Along with all that exercise equipment we don't have the energy to use....
I think we need to create bacteria that can digest all the food additives and then take them as supplements. If they were added to the foods (like the live cultures in yogurt) then the foods would spoil quicker. So you put the preservative in the food, let it sit on the warehouse shelf for as long as you need it to, then when you eat the food, you take the supplement that has the bacteria that can help you to digest the chemicals and allow you to metabolize the food.
Enzymes do most of the work of digestion and metabolism. You can ingest enzymes in the foods you eat if they are fresh and not destroyed by over-cooking or over-processing the foods. Or you can buy digestive enzymes in pill form. The pills, however, were made with enzymes that only digest foods--not "food-like substances" such as food additives.
In fact, we are creating lots of indigestible foods; like things that taste sweet, but can't be metabolized like sugar, and things that taste like fat but can't be metabolized like fat--causing all this to go right through you, and even causing some diahrrea. The problem is, what if these indigestible foods cross into your bloodstream? And your liver can't get rid of them? | |
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| Human Gut microbial communities linked to obesity.
Posted: 12/9/2008 1:30:20 AM |
Peter Turnbaugh, a graduate student working in Gordon's lab, sequenced the microbial community DNA, or microbiome, of a subset of obese and lean twin pairs, he found that obese individuals had an increased representation of nearly 300 bacterial genes, many of which are devoted to extracting calories from food and processing nutrients. This new evidence supports Gordon's earlier research in mice that established a link between obesity and the efficiency of energy harvest from the diet by gut bacteria. What this is saying, is that the bacteria end up over producing products for digestion to be used for energy. Therefore, what is digested, is more, and less passes through as undissolved waste product. So the person with these bacteria, gets more from less food.
The bacteria are too efficient for our own good. It would be as if one person could get one thing from the orange, yet some one else could get twice or three times as much from the very same orange.
Yes, GENES figure in the equation--but only after they have been COMPROMISED from BAD nutrition. After all, GENES are nothing but miniature ORGANS that can be affected like any other Organ from LACK of Good NUTRIENTS! Okay, it's frightening me that you are a health lecturer.
A gene is not a miniature organ. It is a segment of DNA to be taken as one piece of information that is eventually used to create instructions to create amino acids sequences known as proteins or create a particular trait, such as blue eyes or brown hair. An organ is a multi-cellular group of cells/tissues that performs a shared and specific function. A gene cannot be affected specifically by poor nutrition, your body does everything to protect the DNA in the nucleus of a cell, because that is what gives it the information to run.
Mind you, i do NOT think that GENETICS is the ROOT of DISEASE--instead that honor goes to NUTRITION Most of our diseases, come from pathogens, not bad nutrition. Bad nutrition in some cases, can contribute to lower immunity. However, great nutrition does not shield you from disease. You could eat pristine food in perfect combinations and still catch a cold or get malaria from a mosquito bite.
Most DNA damage is caused by free radicals. Not all free radicals are bad, we actually really need them to fuel our immune system, but some are not so great. Oxygenation is taking place all over our body, all the time, it's the final electron acceptor that most of our body systems use to create ATP, which provides the energy to fuel our body processes on the cellular level. Superoxide, hydrogen peroxide, and the hydroxyl radical are sometimes created by the oxygen during reduction reactions. These are highly reactive molecules, meaning that they are really, really friendly with other molecules, like hookers showing up for shore leave. These reactions can cause unwanted side effects and can cause damage at the cellular/DNA level. This is thought to be a big cause of aging, hence the importance of the anti-oxidant vitamin group, A, C and E, along with the polyphenol antioxidants. You can certainly improve your life with a balanced diet/good nutrition. But if you have a heritable disorder, or catch an infectious disease, it's not going to fix it or prevent it.
It would be great to think we had absolute control over our bodies and constant vigilance to what goes into our mouths would guarantee us long life and excellent health. But frankly, it's just not true, it's still a random world we live in, full of variables, many of which we still do not fully understand. Then again even if we lived a life free of chemical interference, and when I say that, understand that everything is chemistry... we could still get run over by a semi on the I-80 one night.
In view of that... try to have fun while you are here. | |
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| Human Gut microbial communities linked to obesity.
Posted: 12/9/2008 6:10:27 AM | The way it is described is not an experiment. More of a survey, really. So drawing any conclusions from the results is unwarranted (As if that will stop people from claiming this as the cause of their weight gain)
It does present a line of investigation though. The results from a single controlled experiment should confirm the relationship alluded to. | |
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| Human Gut microbial communities linked to obesity.
Posted: 12/9/2008 12:48:09 PM |
What if it was less about genetics, how much someone eats or exercises, and more about the community of symbiotic bacteria that exists in our intestines, and helps us to digest the foods we eat? It wouldn't change a thing. If you cannot process grains very well, and so you can eat 15 pizzas a day without getting fat, then that still doesn't mean that your friends should eat 15 pizzas a day, does it? All it means is that you have just wasted 15 pizzas that could have fed 15 poor children who can process pizza well, and you've wasted a lot of your own money, which would have been better spent on what suited your digestion better. It also means that those 15 pizzas will clog up your system and make you very ill, because you simply cannot process pizza well.
You should be thanking these scientists, because they have shown that:
1) Obese people may simply be obese because they eat too much for themselves, not because they eat more than everyone else, but just because they need far less. That means that obese people can stop blaming themselves for their lack of good diet and exercise.
2) Obese people can always get slim. As it is down to bacteria, that can differ from others, there is no guarantee that if they are eating the same as their friends, that they are doing the same, because they may have a more efficient set of bacteria, and may digest food better than their friends. The only criteria anyone can use if their diet and exercise is correct, is if it works. If they become slim, it is right for them. If they don't, it isn't.
3) Obese people are people who can eat far less than slim people, and still get the same nutrients. So they only need to spend maybe 1/2, or 1/3, or 1/4, of their money on food, and the same for their time. That means that obese people can afford to spend far more time enjoying themselves instead of eating, and can afford to spend far more of their money on going out, and on gadgets, and clothes, than slim people, because they don't need to spend half of it on food.
4) If obese people are really better at getting nutrients from food, then in any survival situation, they will survive far longer than a slim person, because they can survive on the same food for far, far longer.
Either way you look at it, this is definitely a reason for obese people to celebrate, and to get thin, because it tells obese people that the reason they eat the same as their friends and are obese, is because it's too much for them. | |
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| Human Gut microbial communities linked to obesity.
Posted: 12/9/2008 1:32:49 PM | Well, I think the important thing here, is that further study could enable scientists to discover ways to enhance the flora of the intestines of people with this problem. This would certainly be less dangerous than bariatric surgery... wouldn't it?
Could people suffering from anorexia, be treated as well, in a reverse situation? | |
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| Human Gut microbial communities linked to obesity.
Posted: 12/10/2008 5:43:50 AM |
Well, I think the important thing here, is that further study could enable scientists to discover ways to enhance the flora of the intestines of people with this problem. This would certainly be less dangerous than bariatric surgery... wouldn't it?
the point I tried to make earlier is that no particular course of therapy is indicated until it's proven that the differing gut populations is a cause of obesity and not an effect. Until fat/skinny twins are put on identical diets and physical regimens, then sampled for their gut load of bacteria at intervals, the relative impact of the differing populations is unknown.
As a snippet of knowledge, knowing the effects of different intestinal biota would be interesting. Practically speaking, it's simpler to control weight by adjusting calorie intake/expenditure. | |
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