11 ms·

Pathogen from gut of obese human causes obesity in germfree mice

131 points by not_that_noob 14y ago

danesparza 14y ago
The article is very interesting. I looked, but couldn't find information on the exact diet of the test subject during the study. Did anybody else have any better luck?
- gte910h 14y ago
  The supplementary information link at the bottom has a link to the diet and how it was prepared: Dietary intervention and sampling. This volunteer was given a diet composed of whole grains, traditional Chinese medicine and prebiotics (WTP diet) for intervention. He was given 4 cans of gruel per day as staple food contract prepared in the form of cooked porridge (370 g wet weight per can) then canned by a food manufacturer (Shanghai Meilin Meida Food Co., Ltd.) for 23 weeks. Each can contained 100 g dry ingredients (59 g of carbohydrate, 15 g of protein, 5 g of fat, and 6 g of fiber) providing 336 kcal energy (70 % of carbohydrate, 17 % of protein, 13 % of fat). Fresh fecal samples were collected with 4 or 5 weeks intervals. Whole blood and serum samples were collected with 0, 9 and 23 week (0d, 9w, 23w). All samples were immediately frozen on collection and stored at -80 °C for subsequent analysis.
  - DenisM 14y ago
    So, only 1344 cals per day.
    - not_that_noob 14y ago
      One can argue it was the calorie restriction and not the bacteria. However, the interesting part was that the pathogen then caused the mice to gain weight.
      - indiecore 14y ago
        Probably because it made the subjects want to eat more. There's no magic bullet for gaining or losing weight, you either eat more or less that your body needs.
        LaGrange 14y ago
        It's funny, how you first said there's no magic bullet, then provided everyone with a magic bullet.
        indiecore 14y ago
        Dieting isn't a magic bullet you fool, it's long, hard and worth it.
        LaGrange 14y ago
        Just being hard, or even applicable in some cases, doesn't make it less of a magic bullet when someone suggests it's applicable to a broad problem.
        indiecore 14y ago
        > Controlling calorie intake is hardly a magic bullet. That's like saying exercise is the magic bullet for gaining muscle or studying is a magic bullet for passing exams.
        AlexandrB 14y ago
        Controlling calorie intake is hardly a magic bullet. That's like saying exercise is the magic bullet for gaining muscle or studying is a magic bullet for passing exams. A magic bullet in this case would be something that allowed weight reduction with no restriction of calories. From experience, restricting calories long-term is very difficult.
        not_that_noob 14y ago
        Interesting. Being satiated after a meal is really a marker for obesity - if you eat less to get to your satiation point vs. someone else who has to eat more to get there, you're less likely to put on the pounds. I wonder if this pathogen messes with that sense of being satiated.
  - sixdimensional 14y ago
    Is it just me or isn't that basically what they feed you in the Matrix? "Tank: Here you go, buddy; 'Breakfast of Champions.' Mouse: If you close your eyes, it almost feels like you're eating runny eggs. Apoc: Yeah, or a bowl of snot. Mouse: Do you know what it really reminds me of? Tasty Wheat. Did you ever eat Tasty Wheat? Switch: No, but technically, neither did you. Mouse: That's exactly my point. Exactly. Because you have to wonder: how do the machines know what Tasty Wheat tasted like? Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe what I think Tasty Wheat tasted like actually tasted like oatmeal, or tuna fish. That makes you wonder about a lot of things. You take chicken, for example: maybe they couldn't figure out what to make chicken taste like, which is why chicken tastes like everything. Apoc: Shut up, Mouse." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/quotes?qt0324288 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/quotes?qt0324288
    - gbeeson 14y ago
      Excellent quote and that sums it up nicely for me. Gack from a can. Yumbo.
psycr 14y ago
Two interesting notes from the abstract: "The endotoxin-producing Enterobacter decreased in relative abundance from 35% of the volunteer’s gut bacteria to non-detectable, during which time the volunteer lost 51.4 kg of 174.8 kg initial weight and recovered from hyperglycemia and hypertension after 23 weeks on a diet of whole grains, traditional Chinese medicinal foods and prebiotics." "The obesity-inducing capacity of this human-derived endotoxin producer in gnotobiotic mice suggests that it may causatively contribute to the development of obesity in its human host."
indiecore 14y ago
Great, another article for fat acceptance idiots to read the title of and declare it cake day. > The volunteer lost 30.1 kg after 9 weeks, and 51.4 kg after 23 weeks, on a diet composed of whole grains, traditional Chinese medicinal foods and prebiotics (WTP diet, Supplementary Information; Supplementary Figure 1), with continued amelioration of hyperinsulinemia, hyperglycemia and hypertension until most metabolic parameters improved to normal ranges (Table 1). After 9 weeks on the WTP diet, this Enterobacter population in the volunteer's gut reduced to 1.8%, and became undetectable by the end of the 23-week trial, as shown in the clone library analysis (Table 1; Supplementary Figures 2 and 3).
- panzagl 14y ago
  You're right, we should all lament the possible passing of another way of judging people inferior to us.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    He missed the part where Monsanto makes a weaponized form of the bacteria that you use against your enemies to make them fat.
    - marshray 14y ago
      I think the Soviets must have beaten us to it.
  - indiecore 14y ago
    I don't care if someone is fat. What I care about is the loons saying that it's healthy and fine to be morbidly obese and they use stuff like this to back it up. "Gut bacteria are the cause, I can do nothing" "It's genetics" No, it's calories in vs calories out. Maybe these bacteria make you want to eat more, maybe they somehow pull more energy out of food than normal gut flora somehow, in the end it doesn't really matter. Eat less, lose weight; eat more, gain weight; the definition of 'more' and 'less' are individual.
    - 14y ago
ChuckMcM 14y ago
Ok, this is an interesting observation: "After 9 weeks on the WTP diet, this Enterobacter population in the volunteer's gut reduced to 1.8%, and became undetectable by the end of the 23-week trial" So the thesis is that this bacteria lives in obese people's gut, and it makes them more obese. But once they diet to a point where they are not obese, the bacteria dies off? I wonder if they are going to try a diet + anti-biotic treatment, diet + placebo trial on two obese patients to see if it improves their chances to get back into a regular balance.
- acgourley 14y ago
  For people who didn't read the summary - that patient who lost 30kg and reduced their bacteria population was on anti-biotics. So, right, it would be interesting to see if that bacteria reduces without the anti-biotics. But before you think the researchers left a big hole in their research, remember that the addition of bacteria makes mice obese. Now if we could just try that on humans... edit: As pdx points out below, not antibiotics, pre-biotics. Big difference.
  - pdx 14y ago
    The patient was not on antibiotics, he was on prebiotics. So, this is something you could do yourself without a doctors cooperation.
    - Luc 14y ago
      The WTP diet is described as 'whole grains, traditional Chinese medicine and prebiotics'. Perhaps there's an active ingredient in the traditional medicine (e.g. an antibiotic occurring in plants)?
      - Mz 14y ago
        Also, a lot of spices have antibiotic properties, and some oils. Food and its impact on health is more chemically complex than most people seem to realize.
- 14y ago
schoper 14y ago
ISME Journal. 1. Two independent facts from the experiment: A pathogen that causes obesity (in mice) seems to be active in some obese humans. 2. Severely restricted diet seems to powerfully reduce the population of this organism. I doubt that these facts are unrelated. It's classic host-parasite behavior. The pathogen depends on high calorie intake in its host, and therefore engineers that behavior (somehow). Further there is no reason to make the leap that the only or best way to counter this pathogen is through diet. It's not impossible that a targeted antibiotic that eliminates this pathogen would have an effect on the body composition of the host.
- not_that_noob 14y ago
  Very interesting observation re parasitic behavior. I suspect that with modern food processing techniques to make food relentlessly cheaper, we have unwittingly enhanced the food supply for the parasite.
  - chc 14y ago
    It's not really unwitting. Anything that increases nutrition for humans necessarily increases the food supply for creatures that prey on humans. Similarly, boosting the rabbit population enhances the food supply for creatures that prey on rabbits.
- michaelbrave 14y ago
  They could probably make a targeted antibiotic, but gut bacteria are something not very well understood yet, and it's a highly complex ecosystem (some would say more complex than our own cells) that differs significantly from person to person. they have done studies though to see if doing a guy bacteria transplant from a healthy person to an obese person would change their weight, I believe there wasn't any difference found for weight loss but that there was some hope in using it as a treatment for diabetes. I'd have to look it up. This particular study though I wonder if it was the calorie restriction, the weight loss or the content of the diet that caused the changes to happen.
jack-r-abbit 14y ago
I can comprehend a good deal of code but this medical jargon is making my head spin. Anyone care to summarize this for us feeble minded laypersons? Because it sounds like they found something in obese people that if eliminated could lead to weight loss. I know there are people that can benefit from that when extreme obesity makes regular, "simple" dieting very challenging and exercise impossible.
- not_that_noob 14y ago
  tl;dr: fat guy lost a ton of weight by a diet that reduced a specific kind of gut bacteria; this bacteria inserted into mice engineered to be thin caused the mice to gain weight. Ergo, bacteria may be driving obesity.
  - jack-r-abbit 14y ago
    So in theory, if a pill was developed to just kill that bacteria, fat guy loses weight.
    - Steqheu 14y ago
      Maybe big pharma and the food industry knew this the whole time.
  - fernly 14y ago
    Not only obesity, but insulin resistance: basically gave the mice the start of "metabolic syndrome", as also observed in obese humans.
icey 14y ago
It paints this animation of the spread of American obesity in a new light: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BRFSS_obesity_1985-2006.gif http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BRFSS_obesity_1985-2006.gi...
- hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
  Epidemic?
debacle 14y ago
Someone made a comment yesterday on another site about how we are still living in the bacterial age. It's a strange notion, that bacteria still own the earth, but we are host to more bacteria than we are our own cells. It's such an interesting yet scary thing to think about - does higher order life exist solely as vessels for bacteria propagation?
- nlh 14y ago
  Mind-bending, eh? It's not too scary a though though -- taking the evolutionists point of view, there is no "underlying" reason that higher order life exists. It exists because the processes of natural selection have enabled it to exist and reproduce. If bacteria contribute to the survival and reproduction of our species (they do), then they are simply part of the process. It goes both ways. We exist and reproduce because they help us do so, and they exist because we provide a nice host. One hand washes the other...
  - npsimons 14y ago
    How's that saying go? 'Life - the whim of a few billion cells to be you for a while'.
- marshray 14y ago
  Well bacteria are a lot smaller than our own cells, so comparing them by count doesn't seem very meaningful.
  - debacle 14y ago
    By mass, bacteria is still the dominant lifeform on earth.
    - marshray 14y ago
      Yeah, that's cool. Any idea how much mass of a human they make up?
splatcollision 14y ago
Gut bacteria are an extremely powerful system within our bodies and are mostly still mysterious to us. Imbalances of one type or another lead to large amounts of bacterial toxins being introduced to the intestine and the bloodstream, with wide-ranging mental and physical effects. I'm not surprised that contribution to obesity is among them. It works kind of like this: You eat too much refined/processed food, that is high in sugars of any kind, especially complex polysaccharides and the food is not fully digested by your stomach + small intestine, and ends up in your large intestine. This surplus of sugars provides abundant food to your billions of gut bacteria, and they start to grow out of control, and mutate. Those mutated bacteria now dump their toxic waste by-products into your body. Following restricted diets that are intended to reduce the food supply to your gut bacteria colonies is a valid and often the only successful way to treat the conditions caused by this influx of bacteria and toxins. Antibiotics of any kind are simply too broad a weapon - they will attempt to eliminate everything which will result in other imbalances. The food we eat every day is the most important factor for intestinal and therefore overall health... [1] This book is helpful: http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info
- jbattle 14y ago
  I thought the problem with refined/processed foods was that they were too easy for our bodies to absorb. Or is that true, but the amount consumed still results in a lot of 'leftovers'?
  - splatcollision 14y ago
    Yeah that seems a little counterintuitive at first, but your assumption is correct. You still absorb lots of cheap calories from the sugars / carbs that you eat, but there's still plenty of leftovers for the bacteria. Everyone's different though - some people may have no issues at all, others are extremely sensitive.
- Alex3917 14y ago
  "[the pathogen] can induce obesity and insulin resistance via an inflammation-mediated pathway" This is why weed reduces one's risk of diabetes and also often helps obese people lose weight.[1] For what it's worth, you can now actually (supposedly) buy CBD (supposedly) legally online: http://dixiex.com/ http://dixiex.com/ CBD is one of the more common non-psychoactive cannabinoids in marijuana, and it is responsible for many of the anti-inflammatory benefits. While more research is needed, lots of people are reporting the same sorts of benefits that this research is reporting, but without the obvious negative side effects of taking anti-biotics. (Whether there are negative effects of longterm CBD use is anyone's guess, but as far as I know nothing has been discovered so far.) [1] http://blog.norml.org/2012/12/12/study-cannabis-associated-with-lower-diabetes-risk/ http://blog.norml.org/2012/12/12/study-cannabis-associated-w...
MrGunn 14y ago
I'd love to see this study enrolled in the Reproducibility Initiative: http://reproducibilityinitiative.com http://reproducibilityinitiative.com Strong claims require strong evidence.
snoldak924 14y ago
This is how the zombie outbreak starts...
patrickgzill 14y ago
It is interesting to consider that periodic fasts and/or abstaining from certain foods for a time (such as Lent during the Orthodox calendar), seen in many religions, might have a health benefit by suppressing certain gut bacteria, or at least managing gut flora.
- MichaelGG 14y ago
  Is it actually interesting? Even the rules were chosen randomly, you'd expect any large body of rules to get something by sheer chance alone.
  - krenoten 14y ago
    It might better be viewed as a behavioral "mutation" of sorts that improved the viability of those who adopted the practice. There are many interesting things that happen by chance.
  - AutoKorrect 14y ago
    yes, it is interesting. Consider that vitamin C was known to prevent scurvy, but then that knowledge was lost, and rediscovered later on. How much knowledge may be codified in ancient customs, and that we might have forgotten the foundations for that knowledge.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      Vitamin C was not known to prevent scurvy. Citrus fruits, which contain vitamin C, were known to prevent scurvy, but no one knew why. They had theories, but the theories were wrong.
- justincormack 14y ago
  American obesity is a recent thing that does not eg seem to be related to stopping fasts.
_stephan 14y ago
This an interesting article by the Economist about the human microbiome ("Looking at human beings as ecosystems"): Link: http://www.economist.com/node/21560523 http://www.economist.com/node/21560523
fernly 14y ago
This is potentially huge news. If it can be replicated you can take all the high-fat/low-fat, high-carb/low-carb, paleo whatever diets and chuck them. "we show that one endotoxin-producing bacterium isolated from a morbidly obese human’s gut induced obesity and insulin resistance in germfree mice." "Germ-free mice" are mice raised from before birth with no germs, so the effect of a single infection can be observed without complications. They claim that a single bacterium strain from a human gut, infected into mice, gave them not just obesity but insulin resistance and inflammatory symptoms -- a close analog of the complex we call "metabolic syndrome" in obese people. If even some cases of metabolic syndrome can be linked to a simple bacterium -- and cured simply by killing that bug -- this will have the economic and medicinal effects of, well, not the eradication of smallpox, but pretty close. Scientifically it's the equal of marshal and warren finding the bacterial cause of peptic ulcers -- and they got the Nobel for medicine for that.
- gte910h 14y ago
  >well, not the eradication of smallpox, but pretty close. Heart disease kills far more people than smallpox ever did. You have a 20% higher chance of heart disease if overweight.

131 points by not_that_noob 14y ago

The article is very interesting. I looked, but couldn't find information on the exact diet of the test subject during the study. Did anybody else have any better luck?

gte910h 14y ago
The supplementary information link at the bottom has a link to the diet and how it was prepared: Dietary intervention and sampling. This volunteer was given a diet composed of whole grains, traditional Chinese medicine and prebiotics (WTP diet) for intervention. He was given 4 cans of gruel per day as staple food contract prepared in the form of cooked porridge (370 g wet weight per can) then canned by a food manufacturer (Shanghai Meilin Meida Food Co., Ltd.) for 23 weeks. Each can contained 100 g dry ingredients (59 g of carbohydrate, 15 g of protein, 5 g of fat, and 6 g of fiber) providing 336 kcal energy (70 % of carbohydrate, 17 % of protein, 13 % of fat). Fresh fecal samples were collected with 4 or 5 weeks intervals. Whole blood and serum samples were collected with 0, 9 and 23 week (0d, 9w, 23w). All samples were immediately frozen on collection and stored at -80 °C for subsequent analysis.
- DenisM 14y ago
  So, only 1344 cals per day.
  - not_that_noob 14y ago
    One can argue it was the calorie restriction and not the bacteria. However, the interesting part was that the pathogen then caused the mice to gain weight.
    - indiecore 14y ago
      Probably because it made the subjects want to eat more. There's no magic bullet for gaining or losing weight, you either eat more or less that your body needs.
      - LaGrange 14y ago
        It's funny, how you first said there's no magic bullet, then provided everyone with a magic bullet.
        indiecore 14y ago
        Dieting isn't a magic bullet you fool, it's long, hard and worth it.
        LaGrange 14y ago
        Just being hard, or even applicable in some cases, doesn't make it less of a magic bullet when someone suggests it's applicable to a broad problem.
        indiecore 14y ago
        > Controlling calorie intake is hardly a magic bullet. That's like saying exercise is the magic bullet for gaining muscle or studying is a magic bullet for passing exams.
        AlexandrB 14y ago
        Controlling calorie intake is hardly a magic bullet. That's like saying exercise is the magic bullet for gaining muscle or studying is a magic bullet for passing exams. A magic bullet in this case would be something that allowed weight reduction with no restriction of calories. From experience, restricting calories long-term is very difficult.
      - not_that_noob 14y ago
        Interesting. Being satiated after a meal is really a marker for obesity - if you eat less to get to your satiation point vs. someone else who has to eat more to get there, you're less likely to put on the pounds. I wonder if this pathogen messes with that sense of being satiated.
- sixdimensional 14y ago
  Is it just me or isn't that basically what they feed you in the Matrix? "Tank: Here you go, buddy; 'Breakfast of Champions.' Mouse: If you close your eyes, it almost feels like you're eating runny eggs. Apoc: Yeah, or a bowl of snot. Mouse: Do you know what it really reminds me of? Tasty Wheat. Did you ever eat Tasty Wheat? Switch: No, but technically, neither did you. Mouse: That's exactly my point. Exactly. Because you have to wonder: how do the machines know what Tasty Wheat tasted like? Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe what I think Tasty Wheat tasted like actually tasted like oatmeal, or tuna fish. That makes you wonder about a lot of things. You take chicken, for example: maybe they couldn't figure out what to make chicken taste like, which is why chicken tastes like everything. Apoc: Shut up, Mouse." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/quotes?qt0324288 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/quotes?qt0324288
  - gbeeson 14y ago
    Excellent quote and that sums it up nicely for me. Gack from a can. Yumbo.

psycr 14y ago

Two interesting notes from the abstract: "The endotoxin-producing Enterobacter decreased in relative abundance from 35% of the volunteer’s gut bacteria to non-detectable, during which time the volunteer lost 51.4 kg of 174.8 kg initial weight and recovered from hyperglycemia and hypertension after 23 weeks on a diet of whole grains, traditional Chinese medicinal foods and prebiotics." "The obesity-inducing capacity of this human-derived endotoxin producer in gnotobiotic mice suggests that it may causatively contribute to the development of obesity in its human host."

indiecore 14y ago

Great, another article for fat acceptance idiots to read the title of and declare it cake day. > The volunteer lost 30.1 kg after 9 weeks, and 51.4 kg after 23 weeks, on a diet composed of whole grains, traditional Chinese medicinal foods and prebiotics (WTP diet, Supplementary Information; Supplementary Figure 1), with continued amelioration of hyperinsulinemia, hyperglycemia and hypertension until most metabolic parameters improved to normal ranges (Table 1). After 9 weeks on the WTP diet, this Enterobacter population in the volunteer's gut reduced to 1.8%, and became undetectable by the end of the 23-week trial, as shown in the clone library analysis (Table 1; Supplementary Figures 2 and 3).

panzagl 14y ago
You're right, we should all lament the possible passing of another way of judging people inferior to us.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  He missed the part where Monsanto makes a weaponized form of the bacteria that you use against your enemies to make them fat.
  - marshray 14y ago
    I think the Soviets must have beaten us to it.
- indiecore 14y ago
  I don't care if someone is fat. What I care about is the loons saying that it's healthy and fine to be morbidly obese and they use stuff like this to back it up. "Gut bacteria are the cause, I can do nothing" "It's genetics" No, it's calories in vs calories out. Maybe these bacteria make you want to eat more, maybe they somehow pull more energy out of food than normal gut flora somehow, in the end it doesn't really matter. Eat less, lose weight; eat more, gain weight; the definition of 'more' and 'less' are individual.
  - 14y ago

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Ok, this is an interesting observation: "After 9 weeks on the WTP diet, this Enterobacter population in the volunteer's gut reduced to 1.8%, and became undetectable by the end of the 23-week trial" So the thesis is that this bacteria lives in obese people's gut, and it makes them more obese. But once they diet to a point where they are not obese, the bacteria dies off? I wonder if they are going to try a diet + anti-biotic treatment, diet + placebo trial on two obese patients to see if it improves their chances to get back into a regular balance.

acgourley 14y ago
For people who didn't read the summary - that patient who lost 30kg and reduced their bacteria population was on anti-biotics. So, right, it would be interesting to see if that bacteria reduces without the anti-biotics. But before you think the researchers left a big hole in their research, remember that the addition of bacteria makes mice obese. Now if we could just try that on humans... edit: As pdx points out below, not antibiotics, pre-biotics. Big difference.
- pdx 14y ago
  The patient was not on antibiotics, he was on prebiotics. So, this is something you could do yourself without a doctors cooperation.
  - Luc 14y ago
    The WTP diet is described as 'whole grains, traditional Chinese medicine and prebiotics'. Perhaps there's an active ingredient in the traditional medicine (e.g. an antibiotic occurring in plants)?
    - Mz 14y ago
      Also, a lot of spices have antibiotic properties, and some oils. Food and its impact on health is more chemically complex than most people seem to realize.
14y ago

schoper 14y ago

ISME Journal. 1. Two independent facts from the experiment: A pathogen that causes obesity (in mice) seems to be active in some obese humans. 2. Severely restricted diet seems to powerfully reduce the population of this organism. I doubt that these facts are unrelated. It's classic host-parasite behavior. The pathogen depends on high calorie intake in its host, and therefore engineers that behavior (somehow). Further there is no reason to make the leap that the only or best way to counter this pathogen is through diet. It's not impossible that a targeted antibiotic that eliminates this pathogen would have an effect on the body composition of the host.

not_that_noob 14y ago
Very interesting observation re parasitic behavior. I suspect that with modern food processing techniques to make food relentlessly cheaper, we have unwittingly enhanced the food supply for the parasite.
- chc 14y ago
  It's not really unwitting. Anything that increases nutrition for humans necessarily increases the food supply for creatures that prey on humans. Similarly, boosting the rabbit population enhances the food supply for creatures that prey on rabbits.
michaelbrave 14y ago
They could probably make a targeted antibiotic, but gut bacteria are something not very well understood yet, and it's a highly complex ecosystem (some would say more complex than our own cells) that differs significantly from person to person. they have done studies though to see if doing a guy bacteria transplant from a healthy person to an obese person would change their weight, I believe there wasn't any difference found for weight loss but that there was some hope in using it as a treatment for diabetes. I'd have to look it up. This particular study though I wonder if it was the calorie restriction, the weight loss or the content of the diet that caused the changes to happen.

jack-r-abbit 14y ago

I can comprehend a good deal of code but this medical jargon is making my head spin. Anyone care to summarize this for us feeble minded laypersons? Because it sounds like they found something in obese people that if eliminated could lead to weight loss. I know there are people that can benefit from that when extreme obesity makes regular, "simple" dieting very challenging and exercise impossible.

not_that_noob 14y ago
tl;dr: fat guy lost a ton of weight by a diet that reduced a specific kind of gut bacteria; this bacteria inserted into mice engineered to be thin caused the mice to gain weight. Ergo, bacteria may be driving obesity.
- jack-r-abbit 14y ago
  So in theory, if a pill was developed to just kill that bacteria, fat guy loses weight.
  - Steqheu 14y ago
    Maybe big pharma and the food industry knew this the whole time.
- fernly 14y ago
  Not only obesity, but insulin resistance: basically gave the mice the start of "metabolic syndrome", as also observed in obese humans.

icey 14y ago

It paints this animation of the spread of American obesity in a new light: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BRFSS_obesity_1985-2006.gif http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BRFSS_obesity_1985-2006.gi...

hcarvalhoalves 14y ago
Epidemic?

debacle 14y ago

Someone made a comment yesterday on another site about how we are still living in the bacterial age. It's a strange notion, that bacteria still own the earth, but we are host to more bacteria than we are our own cells. It's such an interesting yet scary thing to think about - does higher order life exist solely as vessels for bacteria propagation?

nlh 14y ago
Mind-bending, eh? It's not too scary a though though -- taking the evolutionists point of view, there is no "underlying" reason that higher order life exists. It exists because the processes of natural selection have enabled it to exist and reproduce. If bacteria contribute to the survival and reproduction of our species (they do), then they are simply part of the process. It goes both ways. We exist and reproduce because they help us do so, and they exist because we provide a nice host. One hand washes the other...
- npsimons 14y ago
  How's that saying go? 'Life - the whim of a few billion cells to be you for a while'.
marshray 14y ago
Well bacteria are a lot smaller than our own cells, so comparing them by count doesn't seem very meaningful.
- debacle 14y ago
  By mass, bacteria is still the dominant lifeform on earth.
  - marshray 14y ago
    Yeah, that's cool. Any idea how much mass of a human they make up?

splatcollision 14y ago

Gut bacteria are an extremely powerful system within our bodies and are mostly still mysterious to us. Imbalances of one type or another lead to large amounts of bacterial toxins being introduced to the intestine and the bloodstream, with wide-ranging mental and physical effects. I'm not surprised that contribution to obesity is among them. It works kind of like this: You eat too much refined/processed food, that is high in sugars of any kind, especially complex polysaccharides and the food is not fully digested by your stomach + small intestine, and ends up in your large intestine. This surplus of sugars provides abundant food to your billions of gut bacteria, and they start to grow out of control, and mutate. Those mutated bacteria now dump their toxic waste by-products into your body. Following restricted diets that are intended to reduce the food supply to your gut bacteria colonies is a valid and often the only successful way to treat the conditions caused by this influx of bacteria and toxins. Antibiotics of any kind are simply too broad a weapon - they will attempt to eliminate everything which will result in other imbalances. The food we eat every day is the most important factor for intestinal and therefore overall health... [1] This book is helpful: http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info

jbattle 14y ago
I thought the problem with refined/processed foods was that they were too easy for our bodies to absorb. Or is that true, but the amount consumed still results in a lot of 'leftovers'?
- splatcollision 14y ago
  Yeah that seems a little counterintuitive at first, but your assumption is correct. You still absorb lots of cheap calories from the sugars / carbs that you eat, but there's still plenty of leftovers for the bacteria. Everyone's different though - some people may have no issues at all, others are extremely sensitive.
Alex3917 14y ago
"[the pathogen] can induce obesity and insulin resistance via an inflammation-mediated pathway" This is why weed reduces one's risk of diabetes and also often helps obese people lose weight.[1] For what it's worth, you can now actually (supposedly) buy CBD (supposedly) legally online: http://dixiex.com/ http://dixiex.com/ CBD is one of the more common non-psychoactive cannabinoids in marijuana, and it is responsible for many of the anti-inflammatory benefits. While more research is needed, lots of people are reporting the same sorts of benefits that this research is reporting, but without the obvious negative side effects of taking anti-biotics. (Whether there are negative effects of longterm CBD use is anyone's guess, but as far as I know nothing has been discovered so far.) [1] http://blog.norml.org/2012/12/12/study-cannabis-associated-with-lower-diabetes-risk/ http://blog.norml.org/2012/12/12/study-cannabis-associated-w...

MrGunn 14y ago

I'd love to see this study enrolled in the Reproducibility Initiative: http://reproducibilityinitiative.com http://reproducibilityinitiative.com Strong claims require strong evidence.

snoldak924 14y ago

This is how the zombie outbreak starts...

patrickgzill 14y ago

It is interesting to consider that periodic fasts and/or abstaining from certain foods for a time (such as Lent during the Orthodox calendar), seen in many religions, might have a health benefit by suppressing certain gut bacteria, or at least managing gut flora.

MichaelGG 14y ago
Is it actually interesting? Even the rules were chosen randomly, you'd expect any large body of rules to get something by sheer chance alone.
- krenoten 14y ago
  It might better be viewed as a behavioral "mutation" of sorts that improved the viability of those who adopted the practice. There are many interesting things that happen by chance.
- AutoKorrect 14y ago
  yes, it is interesting. Consider that vitamin C was known to prevent scurvy, but then that knowledge was lost, and rediscovered later on. How much knowledge may be codified in ancient customs, and that we might have forgotten the foundations for that knowledge.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    Vitamin C was not known to prevent scurvy. Citrus fruits, which contain vitamin C, were known to prevent scurvy, but no one knew why. They had theories, but the theories were wrong.
justincormack 14y ago
American obesity is a recent thing that does not eg seem to be related to stopping fasts.

_stephan 14y ago

This an interesting article by the Economist about the human microbiome ("Looking at human beings as ecosystems"): Link: http://www.economist.com/node/21560523 http://www.economist.com/node/21560523

fernly 14y ago

This is potentially huge news. If it can be replicated you can take all the high-fat/low-fat, high-carb/low-carb, paleo whatever diets and chuck them. "we show that one endotoxin-producing bacterium isolated from a morbidly obese human’s gut induced obesity and insulin resistance in germfree mice." "Germ-free mice" are mice raised from before birth with no germs, so the effect of a single infection can be observed without complications. They claim that a single bacterium strain from a human gut, infected into mice, gave them not just obesity but insulin resistance and inflammatory symptoms -- a close analog of the complex we call "metabolic syndrome" in obese people. If even some cases of metabolic syndrome can be linked to a simple bacterium -- and cured simply by killing that bug -- this will have the economic and medicinal effects of, well, not the eradication of smallpox, but pretty close. Scientifically it's the equal of marshal and warren finding the bacterial cause of peptic ulcers -- and they got the Nobel for medicine for that.

gte910h 14y ago
>well, not the eradication of smallpox, but pretty close. Heart disease kills far more people than smallpox ever did. You have a 20% higher chance of heart disease if overweight.