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I wonder to what extent is Obesity contagious. If you can improve your gut bacteria, surely you can make it worse. Can you pick up gut bacteria from Obese peopl

I wonder to what extent is Obesity contagious. If you can improve your gut bacteria, surely you can make it worse. Can you pick up gut bacteria from Obese people. Maybe going to the gym helps you lose weight because you touch surfaces and pick up bacteria from fit people. And so on. Just conjecture.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
I don’t think obesity itself is contagious (unless you’re mucking about in an obese person’s fecal matter). My hunch is antibiotic usage disrupts your gut biome enough that it pushes your energy extraction balance off, causing obesity. As a society, we abuse antibiotics in the aggregate (demanding it from health care providers and pouring it into factory farms). It can’t possibly not be disrupting our guy biome. It also doesn’t help that the sugar lobby/industry is so powerful, and sugar/corn syrup is in everything.
- eru 9y ago
  I don't think it's the energy extraction that's changing, but people's set points for weight. > It also doesn’t help that the sugar lobby/industry is so powerful, and sugar/corn syrup is in everything. Corn syrup ain't good, but we have fat people in other parts of the world, too.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Rapidly increasing obesity rates seem to be associated with a first world/western diet.
    - alexanderstears 9y ago
      And you don't need High Fructose Corn Syrup for a first world/western diet, but it does make the first world/western diet more affordable. Imo the 'western diet' is a bit of a misnomer. I don't eat like my European ancestors - who primarily ate grain and vegetables because they were poor peasants. In the week prior to thanksgiving, I've ate chana masala, sushi, pizza, hamburgers, pad thai, corn dogs, rice and beans, tortas, and burritos - collectively, those options are only available in the first world. What's 'western' about it is that the west is the only place you can get all those meals in a town of 100k/people. It's not western in the sense that there's something greco-roman about oreos. My hunch is that the variety of food really throws people for a loop. If you ate vegetable soup and bread all day, it'd be very easy to know the proper amount to eat. However, good luck pattern matching sushi, corn dogs, and rice and beans - and most people seem predisposed to overeat in light of uncertainty. I've struggled with binge eating in the past and I've changed my default meal to that of rice and beans and after an adjustment period, I've never had a binge eating episode on rice and beans. It's hypothesized that people have a set point that they eat up to, and there's something about a wide variety of food that makes it hard to feel like you've hit that set point. And some food (e.g Frito Lay snack food) is designed to increase your appetite. I've done a lot of research into nutrition - and discount my opinion because I have 0 medical training and functionally 0 training in biology - but my 'hunch' is that most people would do well to eat like their ancestors.
    - eru 9y ago
      Further investigation seems useful. Eg anecdotally I can see people in India putting on the pounds much more than Chinese---whether on the mainland or in South-East Asia like Singapore. But I don't know the statistics off the top of my head, I only lived there.
xinyhn 9y ago
Seems like in the next few years might see some more information about fecal transplants for obesity. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5045147/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5045147/
not_that_noob 9y ago
There is ongoing investigation in this area on mother-child transfers of gut bacteria that may influence body weight. The evidence seems to be pointing to diet influencing the type of bacteria that thrive in the gut - so my gut (ha ha) says that a few bacteria entering the gut won’t change things - you need to more or less farm them.

toomuchtodo 9y ago

I don’t think obesity itself is contagious (unless you’re mucking about in an obese person’s fecal matter). My hunch is antibiotic usage disrupts your gut biome enough that it pushes your energy extraction balance off, causing obesity. As a society, we abuse antibiotics in the aggregate (demanding it from health care providers and pouring it into factory farms). It can’t possibly not be disrupting our guy biome. It also doesn’t help that the sugar lobby/industry is so powerful, and sugar/corn syrup is in everything.

eru 9y ago
I don't think it's the energy extraction that's changing, but people's set points for weight. > It also doesn’t help that the sugar lobby/industry is so powerful, and sugar/corn syrup is in everything. Corn syrup ain't good, but we have fat people in other parts of the world, too.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Rapidly increasing obesity rates seem to be associated with a first world/western diet.
  - alexanderstears 9y ago
    And you don't need High Fructose Corn Syrup for a first world/western diet, but it does make the first world/western diet more affordable. Imo the 'western diet' is a bit of a misnomer. I don't eat like my European ancestors - who primarily ate grain and vegetables because they were poor peasants. In the week prior to thanksgiving, I've ate chana masala, sushi, pizza, hamburgers, pad thai, corn dogs, rice and beans, tortas, and burritos - collectively, those options are only available in the first world. What's 'western' about it is that the west is the only place you can get all those meals in a town of 100k/people. It's not western in the sense that there's something greco-roman about oreos. My hunch is that the variety of food really throws people for a loop. If you ate vegetable soup and bread all day, it'd be very easy to know the proper amount to eat. However, good luck pattern matching sushi, corn dogs, and rice and beans - and most people seem predisposed to overeat in light of uncertainty. I've struggled with binge eating in the past and I've changed my default meal to that of rice and beans and after an adjustment period, I've never had a binge eating episode on rice and beans. It's hypothesized that people have a set point that they eat up to, and there's something about a wide variety of food that makes it hard to feel like you've hit that set point. And some food (e.g Frito Lay snack food) is designed to increase your appetite. I've done a lot of research into nutrition - and discount my opinion because I have 0 medical training and functionally 0 training in biology - but my 'hunch' is that most people would do well to eat like their ancestors.
  - eru 9y ago
    Further investigation seems useful. Eg anecdotally I can see people in India putting on the pounds much more than Chinese---whether on the mainland or in South-East Asia like Singapore. But I don't know the statistics off the top of my head, I only lived there.

xinyhn 9y ago

Seems like in the next few years might see some more information about fecal transplants for obesity. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5045147/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5045147/

not_that_noob 9y ago

There is ongoing investigation in this area on mother-child transfers of gut bacteria that may influence body weight. The evidence seems to be pointing to diet influencing the type of bacteria that thrive in the gut - so my gut (ha ha) says that a few bacteria entering the gut won’t change things - you need to more or less farm them.