3 ms·
That seems to be the suggestion, but I wonder if it's the the wrong hypothesis. What if some bacteria have evolved to "hack" the metabolic signals from our gut
by jobu 11y ago
That seems to be the suggestion, but I wonder if it's the the wrong hypothesis.
What if some bacteria have evolved to "hack" the metabolic signals from our guts (and possibly other mammals)?
They could stimulate ghrelin to make us want more food to feed them. Or slow down food progress through the gut to give them more time to reproduce.
- CuriouslyC 11y agoYou're partly right. The primary byproduct of bacterial fermentation is short-chain fatty acids. These do in fact stimulate the release of peptide YY, which reduces gastric motility. It is extremely unlikely that the bacteria are the ones "hacking" us though; short chain fatty acid production is the result of fairly ubiquitous, low level pathways whereas modulation of hormone release is a fairly specialized, high level function.