6 ms·

Is obesity an oral bacterial disease?

12 points by ph0rque 17y ago

siukwai 17y ago
I question whether or not this is causality or correlation. It may just be that overweight females have a higher concentrtion of that oral bacteria; not that the oral bacteria in higher concentrations is -causing- obesity.
- xiaoma 17y ago
  The article raised exactly that question in the last paragraph.
seldo 17y ago
No. By which I mean: this is much more likely to be effect than cause, e.g. overweight people might have more sugary diets, so sugar-loving bacteria would be favoured.
vaksel 17y ago
no its the I am too lazy to workout disease being fat is not even about overeating, as long as you put in the effort to workout to burn those calories, you can eat whatever you want and still remain in shape. You won't get a sixpack, since that requires a proper diet, but you should still be in decent shape.
- randallsquared 17y ago
  "being fat is not even about overeating, as long as you put in the effort to workout to burn those calories, you can eat whatever you want and still remain in shape." Do the math. It's not too difficult to snack along, have three meals a day, and end up with 6000-8000 calories. Assuming you're a big guy, you might have a 2500-calorie base metabolism, and burn maybe another (being generous) 1500 calories a day in normal movement. That means you have to exercise specifically to burn 1000-3000 calories a day. If you run for 800 calories an hour, you'll have to run for hours every day just to burn off what you're eating. It's completely impractical to try to burn as much as you could eat.
  - travisjeffery 17y ago
    I have not once, and I am not exaggerating once seen a person who logically should be fit as they ate healthily and exercised an adequate amount and was still obese, ever. Every obese person I've ever known ate crap and didn't exercise at all. And when they tried to get thin they would either half-ass it or do the latest fad diet for 2 weeks or something and get right back to where they were later.
    - mynameishere 17y ago
      You're using a lot of imprecise terms. When I was a kid, I probably packed in those 5000 calories a day, but still stayed thin. I knew fat people who ate like tiny sparrows but stayed fat. There's a strong genetic (or bacterial, or whatever) component to weight.
      - travisjeffery 17y ago
        Everyone here is using imprecise terms including you. And just because a person eats a little amount doesn't mean much, in my experience it more depends on what it is you eat. You can eat about as many buckets of broccoli and chicken as you want and stay fit compared to one who nothing but chocolate in smaller amounts or whatever (choose some unhealthy food). And also I'm sick and tired of people who rely on genetics as their problems. Go into the household of an obese family and there on their dinner table you will find tons on unhealthy foods and snacks. In each new generation of this family they grow up accustomed to eating in this manner and are obese more because of that than anything else. And when you're young you're both active and have a metabolism that's burning calories like crazy--that's what's keeping you fit. Not genetics. Also as for obese people who eat little--I knew such people, or at least I thought so. Then during each meal with one such person I noticed how little they ate. Then once during late at night I went upstairs to the kitchen to see the light on--I looked around the corner--there was this such person eating nothing but ice cream and pie; and a lot of it. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it isn't happening. In the same way people can hide their drug and alcohol addictions so too can obese people hide their food addiction.
    - 17y ago
- thras 17y ago
  After being fat from early childhood, I lost 160 pounds by eating 900 calories a day. Eventually I got down to the weight I wanted (normal weight for my height) and was running 5 miles a day. I couldn't take the diet any more. I'm a fellow with tremendous willpower. But it was the strangest thing -- I couldn't force myself to stay on an easy 2100 calorie a day diet even though that was what I thought about every day, nearly every moment of the day. Even though I had managed 900 a day for more than a year. Anyway, while running 5 miles a day still, I immediately began gaining 15 pounds a month. Eventually I couldn't run anymore. I'm sorry, but the argument from thermodynamics is as bankrupt at explaining fat gain as it is in explaining height gain for adolescents. For height gain, the fact that energy in equals energy out is a true statement, but the explanation is growth hormone. If you calorie limit a growing child, the child will be somewhat (not very though) stunted, but will make up the energy difference through lethargy and by consuming all sorts of internal tissues. For obesity, the explanation is insulin. I cut carbohydrates almost completely from my diet in January. Otherwise I ate what I wanted when I wanted (I measure my consumption in pounds of red meat per day). I'm amazingly healthier. I've lost 50 pounds. I've gained so much muscle that I can do pull-ups. Fucking pull-ups at my weight. With low-calorie dieting, I couldn't do pull-ups until I had lost another 70 pounds past that point. I'm putting on muscle and losing fat, and I'm eating huge quantities at every meal. Plus I have a desk job and barely exercise. The argument from thermodynamics assumes that the fat tissue is a trash can and that weight homeostasis doesn't exist. It's a bankrupt theory that can't explain diseases like progressive lipodystrophy (a disease which makes people obese and emaciated at the same time). It can't explain why people who starve the calories off are not the same at the end as normal thin people and almost inevitably gain the pounds back. It can't explain why 1950s treatment to get anorexics to gain weight was through injecting them with insulin and not feeding them any more than they had been (during treatment). In summary, you're seeking a psychological explanation of a physiological problem. Kind of like the discredited quack Sigmund Freud often did, eh? A physiological explanation might lead to the suggestion that we eat the way we evolved to eat -- no refined carbohydrate.
  - ericb 17y ago
    On the same token, do you know anyone who breathes too much air? Could the average person use willpower to cut their air intake for a year?
tokenadult 17y ago
This is just the kind of news report about a new research study that should be examined with Peter Norvig's checklist of issues to consider in scientific research: http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html
gilesgoatboy 17y ago
I took on a radical vegan diet - no processed foods, not even refined grains (which means not even bread) - and I lost sixty pounds between March or April and right now (July). Speaking as somebody who cured their own obesity with very little effort or struggle, I not only believe the answer is no, obesity is not an oral bacterial disease, I also believe the question is ridiculous.
haseman 17y ago
Misleading headline. The article posits the existence of a bacteria in obese women, it does not go into the issue of causality as the headline suggests.

12 points by ph0rque 17y ago

I question whether or not this is causality or correlation. It may just be that overweight females have a higher concentrtion of that oral bacteria; not that the oral bacteria in higher concentrations is -causing- obesity.

xiaoma 17y ago
The article raised exactly that question in the last paragraph.

seldo 17y ago

No. By which I mean: this is much more likely to be effect than cause, e.g. overweight people might have more sugary diets, so sugar-loving bacteria would be favoured.

vaksel 17y ago

no its the I am too lazy to workout disease being fat is not even about overeating, as long as you put in the effort to workout to burn those calories, you can eat whatever you want and still remain in shape. You won't get a sixpack, since that requires a proper diet, but you should still be in decent shape.

randallsquared 17y ago
"being fat is not even about overeating, as long as you put in the effort to workout to burn those calories, you can eat whatever you want and still remain in shape." Do the math. It's not too difficult to snack along, have three meals a day, and end up with 6000-8000 calories. Assuming you're a big guy, you might have a 2500-calorie base metabolism, and burn maybe another (being generous) 1500 calories a day in normal movement. That means you have to exercise specifically to burn 1000-3000 calories a day. If you run for 800 calories an hour, you'll have to run for hours every day just to burn off what you're eating. It's completely impractical to try to burn as much as you could eat.
- travisjeffery 17y ago
  I have not once, and I am not exaggerating once seen a person who logically should be fit as they ate healthily and exercised an adequate amount and was still obese, ever. Every obese person I've ever known ate crap and didn't exercise at all. And when they tried to get thin they would either half-ass it or do the latest fad diet for 2 weeks or something and get right back to where they were later.
  - mynameishere 17y ago
    You're using a lot of imprecise terms. When I was a kid, I probably packed in those 5000 calories a day, but still stayed thin. I knew fat people who ate like tiny sparrows but stayed fat. There's a strong genetic (or bacterial, or whatever) component to weight.
    - travisjeffery 17y ago
      Everyone here is using imprecise terms including you. And just because a person eats a little amount doesn't mean much, in my experience it more depends on what it is you eat. You can eat about as many buckets of broccoli and chicken as you want and stay fit compared to one who nothing but chocolate in smaller amounts or whatever (choose some unhealthy food). And also I'm sick and tired of people who rely on genetics as their problems. Go into the household of an obese family and there on their dinner table you will find tons on unhealthy foods and snacks. In each new generation of this family they grow up accustomed to eating in this manner and are obese more because of that than anything else. And when you're young you're both active and have a metabolism that's burning calories like crazy--that's what's keeping you fit. Not genetics. Also as for obese people who eat little--I knew such people, or at least I thought so. Then during each meal with one such person I noticed how little they ate. Then once during late at night I went upstairs to the kitchen to see the light on--I looked around the corner--there was this such person eating nothing but ice cream and pie; and a lot of it. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it isn't happening. In the same way people can hide their drug and alcohol addictions so too can obese people hide their food addiction.
  - 17y ago
thras 17y ago
After being fat from early childhood, I lost 160 pounds by eating 900 calories a day. Eventually I got down to the weight I wanted (normal weight for my height) and was running 5 miles a day. I couldn't take the diet any more. I'm a fellow with tremendous willpower. But it was the strangest thing -- I couldn't force myself to stay on an easy 2100 calorie a day diet even though that was what I thought about every day, nearly every moment of the day. Even though I had managed 900 a day for more than a year. Anyway, while running 5 miles a day still, I immediately began gaining 15 pounds a month. Eventually I couldn't run anymore. I'm sorry, but the argument from thermodynamics is as bankrupt at explaining fat gain as it is in explaining height gain for adolescents. For height gain, the fact that energy in equals energy out is a true statement, but the explanation is growth hormone. If you calorie limit a growing child, the child will be somewhat (not very though) stunted, but will make up the energy difference through lethargy and by consuming all sorts of internal tissues. For obesity, the explanation is insulin. I cut carbohydrates almost completely from my diet in January. Otherwise I ate what I wanted when I wanted (I measure my consumption in pounds of red meat per day). I'm amazingly healthier. I've lost 50 pounds. I've gained so much muscle that I can do pull-ups. Fucking pull-ups at my weight. With low-calorie dieting, I couldn't do pull-ups until I had lost another 70 pounds past that point. I'm putting on muscle and losing fat, and I'm eating huge quantities at every meal. Plus I have a desk job and barely exercise. The argument from thermodynamics assumes that the fat tissue is a trash can and that weight homeostasis doesn't exist. It's a bankrupt theory that can't explain diseases like progressive lipodystrophy (a disease which makes people obese and emaciated at the same time). It can't explain why people who starve the calories off are not the same at the end as normal thin people and almost inevitably gain the pounds back. It can't explain why 1950s treatment to get anorexics to gain weight was through injecting them with insulin and not feeding them any more than they had been (during treatment). In summary, you're seeking a psychological explanation of a physiological problem. Kind of like the discredited quack Sigmund Freud often did, eh? A physiological explanation might lead to the suggestion that we eat the way we evolved to eat -- no refined carbohydrate.
- ericb 17y ago
  On the same token, do you know anyone who breathes too much air? Could the average person use willpower to cut their air intake for a year?

tokenadult 17y ago

This is just the kind of news report about a new research study that should be examined with Peter Norvig's checklist of issues to consider in scientific research: http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

gilesgoatboy 17y ago

I took on a radical vegan diet - no processed foods, not even refined grains (which means not even bread) - and I lost sixty pounds between March or April and right now (July). Speaking as somebody who cured their own obesity with very little effort or struggle, I not only believe the answer is no, obesity is not an oral bacterial disease, I also believe the question is ridiculous.

haseman 17y ago

Misleading headline. The article posits the existence of a bacteria in obese women, it does not go into the issue of causality as the headline suggests.