Posted on 12/19/2012 5:45:56 AM PST by upchuck
Edited on 12/19/2012 5:48:00 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Obesity in human beings could be caused by bacterial infection rather than eating too much, exercising too little or genetics, according to a groundbreaking study that could have profound implications for public health systems, the pharmaceutical industry and food manufacturers.
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
Pardon my skepticism.
Voting for 0bama is caused by bacteria in the brain.
Go read the article comments. Lots of skeptics.
Diabetes ping.
It is quite possible.
IIRC, some types of pneumonia, stomach ulcers, and heart murmurs have been said to be caused by certain kinds of bacteria.
One of the treatments for stomach ulcers is high doses of the bismuth in products like Pepto Bismol.
And we all thought it was due to 32 oz. sodas.
I couldn’t get to the article; I just kept getting pop-ups and being routed back to the front page. So I’ll content myself with observing that if this is the case, why hasn’t anyone noticed that obese people on antibiotics suddenly lose weight? (I’m guessing they don’t.)
Moochelle might disagree with this study.
That’s what happens when you have s**t for brains!!!
>>Obesity in human beings could be caused by bacterial infection rather than eating too much, exercising too little or genetics<<
Interestingly this bacteria is found in:
* Sugary snacks
* Colas and other high-fructose drinks
* Carbohydrate-laden fast foods
* Booze
The natural repellents to these bacteria are found in:
* Running shoes
* Gym equipment
* The local YMCA
Could you post the article instead of an excerpt? It wants you to register to see it and I’d rather not.
Can you please give us a recap?
A few years ago some smart doctors in Australia determined that loads of ulcers too were the result of stomach viruses..
I’m sorry, but I think this is mostly nonsense. Bacteria might make you gassy or bloated, and maybe they could make you constipated so you pack some weight on because of that. However, they can’t magically materialize matter that you do not stuff down your throat in the first place. You simply cannot attribute the gross obesity common in America to bacteria.
Might be something to this. If you kill off certain types of gut bacteria, you don't have those bacteria helping to break down that much food and it just passes through.
Not saying this is healthy. From what I understand, this is how your guts are supposed to work...
The links are useless. Here’s one to a different article on the same subject. Amish are involved;
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120815174902.htm
Also, Rheumatoid Arthritis has been linked to gut bacteria. Some doctors prescribe antibiotics for RA, and in some cases it works.
“why hasn’t anyone noticed that obese people on antibiotics suddenly lose weight? (I’m guessing they don’t.)”
Well,,,, people don’t usually take antibiotics for a very long time. Mine is 3X/day, for 7 days. Might not be long enough to see much difference. And bacteria can grow back at a very high rate. May need to “target” the meds differently,,, say with an enteric capsule that doesn’t dissolve in the stomach? I’m not really a doctor, but when I was a kid, I played doctor with the neighbor’s daughter.
Mouth bacteria is now being related to cardiovascular disease.
This is interesting to me.
I adopted a little fat baby and over a year the formerly thin vegan vegatarian became fat.
You are not a horse or cow. Humans don’t use bacterial processes to break down food.
Ruminants have special stomachs, and the bacteria generally breakdown cellulose. Humans have a single chamber stomach, and cannot digest cellulose (even fat people).
The bacteria normally found in the gut are very beneficial to many bodily functions including immune response.
So, how do you get rid of the bad bacteria?
Could just be Candida.
Could just be Candida.
You may already know this, but Candida is a fungus, not a bacterium.
Like I said, killing off certain types of gut bacteria may have an affect on total calories absorbed based off my anecdotal recent evidence and as posited by the above linked to news article... but probably isn't a healthy thing to do in the long run.
“You may already know this, but Candida is a fungus, not a bacterium.”
I know. My guess is as good as theirs. And I didn’t spend 1/4 million of Daddy’s money to learn that in college.
I’m no rocket scientist, but I have discovered that consuming more calories than I burn makes me fat.
Peptobismol only makes helicobacter pylorii vulnerable. It takes amoxycillin antibiotic coadministered to kill them. Either medicine alone will not due the trick.
(Don't know what the effective dosage is. It's if/when I've had to take amoxycillin to conquer an abcessed tooth that I always take some Peptobismol at the same time, a course of treatment of about 2 weeks, just in case. It is helpful to know that the sulfonophane in broccoli also can eradicate the h. pylori, which can caise gastritis and stomach cancer.)
Well, if anti-biotics will cure it, it shouldn’t take long for them to prove it.
Five pounds is not much, it could all be due to water retention or something like that. Your body weight fluctuates by a few pounds just due to variations in your diet, activity, the season, etc. However, the obesity epidemic in America isn’t about people who are five pounds, or ten, or even fifteen pounds overweight. I see, every single day, multiple people who are 30, 40, 50 pounds or more overweight. To think bacteria are the cause of that gross obesity just defies common sense. Why wouldn’t every country on the planet have the same problem if that were true?
I would like to see a human study.
I am sticking with the idea/hypothesis that in humans weight is a function of caloric intake and exercise/activity. The bacterial effect on nutrient/calorie absorption having such a minor effect that it constitutes a rounding error.
Science is all about testing hypotheses, and this one looks prime to test.
Thanks for the link.
I’m not sure what’s going on with this article on ft.com. I found the link to the article on Drudge. I followed the link and had no problem. I do not have a subscription to ft.com. I just followed the link again and, again, had no problem. Maybe ft.com just likes me? :)
Agreed. You can have smoke without fire, but it is always a good thing to check. ;-)
bump for later
I can see this being right. One use of antibiotics for livestock is to fatten them up.
Antibiotics as Growth Promotants: Mode of Action
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ref/10.1081/ABIO-120005768
Microbial shifts in the swine distal gut in response to the treatment with antimicrobial growth promoter, tylosin.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22955886
“Antimicrobials have been used extensively as growth promoters (AGPs) in agricultural animal production. However, the specific mechanism of action for AGPs has not yet been determined. The work presented here was to determine and characterize the microbiome of pigs receiving one AGP, tylosin, compared with untreated pigs. We hypothesized that AGPs exerted their growth promoting effect by altering gut microbial population composition.”
Antibiotics in early life alter the murine colonic microbiome and adiposity.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22914093
“Antibiotics administered in low doses have been widely used as growth promoters in the agricultural industry since the 1950s, yet the mechanisms for this effect are unclear. Because antimicrobial agents of different classes and varying activity are effective across several vertebrate species, we proposed that such subtherapeutic administration alters the population structure of the gut microbiome as well as its metabolic capabilities. We generated a model of adiposity by giving subtherapeutic antibiotic therapy to young mice and evaluated changes in the composition and capabilities of the gut microbiome. Administration of subtherapeutic antibiotic therapy increased adiposity in young mice and increased hormone levels related to metabolism. We observed substantial taxonomic changes in the microbiome, changes in copies of key genes involved in the metabolism of carbohydrates to short-chain fatty acids, increases in colonic short-chain fatty acid levels, and alterations in the regulation of hepatic metabolism of lipids and cholesterol. In this model, we demonstrate the alteration of early-life murine metabolic homeostasis through antibiotic manipulation.”
Effect of antibiotic growth promoters on broiler performance, intestinal growth parameters, and quantitative morphology.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16553279
And there are more. Antibiotics have been livestock growth promoters for years. I imagine they have a similar effect on people by altering the intestine and flora.
Thanks for all that info. Very interesting. My question: Once my gut gets all screwed up, how do I put it back? :)
1) Take antibiotics
2) Screw up your gut
3) Put on weight
4) We eat you
Problem solved
Probiotic supplements, live culture yogurt or, believe it or not, fecal transplantation from a healthy, preferably related individual. The fecal transplant is relatively new and seems to be sort of a last resort for more serious cases.
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