2 ms·

It seems more and more possible that we will soon discover substances that affect the gut microbiome to control/change people's behavior, for good or worse.

• fb03 9y ago
  you can do it right now through food. the gut microbiome tells the host what it wants to eat or not. Different diets cater to different bacteria, that's the reason (for example) that people that now eat healthy but before could eat as much junk food as they wanted without side effects can't simply "switch back" to their old habits without getting bloated or just plain sick. Anecdotal evidence: I lost about 50kg thru dieting, during my old days I could eat as much McDonalds as I wanted. Now if try to have anything but the smallest burger there I get sick, my system simply does not accept it anymore ;)
• will_brown 9y ago
  Well we know we can curb even cocaine addicted rats (behavior) by offering a mutually exclusive option of the cocaine or sugar/sweetener. They don't exactly get into the microbiome, but in a separate study they do test the differences of high fat vs high sugar diets and the impact on the microbiome: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2894525/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2894525/ The study showed the same preference using both saccharin –a calorie-free sweetener - and sucrose (natural sugar w/calories). The study was also performed on rats who had never been introduced to cocaine and those exposed and with addiction to the drug. Up to 94% of the rats preferred the sweetener. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1931610/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1931610/ I'd go into some of the human studies, but it tends to start a flame war here, so I'll skip it and just link to this, and allow people to draw there own conclusions: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4940716/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4940716/
  • Simon_says 9y ago
    I'm not sure what that proves other than that sugar is more addictive than cocaine.