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> There are more gut bacteria than human cells in our body "[That] is technically true, in the sense that Vin Diesel is outnumbered by a small bag of crickets.

by domdip 12y ago

> There are more gut bacteria than human cells in our body "[That] is technically true, in the sense that Vin Diesel is outnumbered by a small bag of crickets." http://carcinisation.com/2014/08/14/science-journalism-marches-on/ http://carcinisation.com/2014/08/14/science-journalism-march...

saym 12y ago
Thanks for linking me to this. I too made the incorrect assumption.
Synaesthesia 12y ago
I read somewhere the mass of gut bacteria in a persons body is about a pound.
- makeset 12y ago
  BRB, working on the marketing copy for my Antibiotics Diet for Weight Loss (TM).
pja 12y ago
The rebuttal is itself technically true but I think misses the point of the original statement: The gut is a complex system which has direct effects on many other systems in the body, including the brain. The resultant feedback loops are not well understood at the current time. If you treat the gut as a simple "food processor" that does nothing more than take in food, break it down and transfer the resluting proteins & sugars into the bloodstream then you're vastly over simplifying things. Yes, it's perfectly true that gut bacteria do not make up a huge percentage of your body mass, but you could say the same thing about your kidneys & anyone who claimed that the kidney "just takes waste products from the bloodstream and excretes them as urine" would be over simplifying things enormously. That statement is as true as the "gut bacteria are only 1% of your body mass" one, but it also misses out on a lot of complexity - the kidneys are involved in all sorts of hormonal feedback loops & can go wrong in many weird and wonderful ways. The same is true of the gut, and that's the point of the original statement about the vast number of gut bacteria IMO - it's reminding us that the digestive system is in fact very complex and an active participant in hormonal feedback loops that affect the rest of the body, including those that affect how much we want to eat.
pessimizer 12y ago
I don't think that anyone understands that sentence in the way that this is trying to debunk. Are there people who read that sentence and think that there's a larger amount of gut bacteria than human body in the human body by weight or volume? That would require that there be people that think that the human gut itself weighs more than the rest of the body. >"[That] is technically true, in the sense that Vin Diesel is outnumbered by a small bag of crickets." In what sense is Vin Diesel not outnumbered by a bag of crickets? Combat skill?
Terr_ 12y ago
Alternately, if your body was the world, the nation of "You" would be a single unified hyperpower formed by the intermarried populations of China, India, the USA, and the next 100 biggest countries. The "Microbe Nations" would be Monaco all the other table-top countries and tiny one-man-on-an-island republics, and they would also fight amongst themselves.

by domdip 12y ago

saym 12y ago

Thanks for linking me to this. I too made the incorrect assumption.

Synaesthesia 12y ago

I read somewhere the mass of gut bacteria in a persons body is about a pound.

makeset 12y ago
BRB, working on the marketing copy for my Antibiotics Diet for Weight Loss (TM).

pja 12y ago

The rebuttal is itself technically true but I think misses the point of the original statement: The gut is a complex system which has direct effects on many other systems in the body, including the brain. The resultant feedback loops are not well understood at the current time. If you treat the gut as a simple "food processor" that does nothing more than take in food, break it down and transfer the resluting proteins & sugars into the bloodstream then you're vastly over simplifying things. Yes, it's perfectly true that gut bacteria do not make up a huge percentage of your body mass, but you could say the same thing about your kidneys & anyone who claimed that the kidney "just takes waste products from the bloodstream and excretes them as urine" would be over simplifying things enormously. That statement is as true as the "gut bacteria are only 1% of your body mass" one, but it also misses out on a lot of complexity - the kidneys are involved in all sorts of hormonal feedback loops & can go wrong in many weird and wonderful ways. The same is true of the gut, and that's the point of the original statement about the vast number of gut bacteria IMO - it's reminding us that the digestive system is in fact very complex and an active participant in hormonal feedback loops that affect the rest of the body, including those that affect how much we want to eat.

pessimizer 12y ago

I don't think that anyone understands that sentence in the way that this is trying to debunk. Are there people who read that sentence and think that there's a larger amount of gut bacteria than human body in the human body by weight or volume? That would require that there be people that think that the human gut itself weighs more than the rest of the body. >"[That] is technically true, in the sense that Vin Diesel is outnumbered by a small bag of crickets." In what sense is Vin Diesel not outnumbered by a bag of crickets? Combat skill?

Terr_ 12y ago

Alternately, if your body was the world, the nation of "You" would be a single unified hyperpower formed by the intermarried populations of China, India, the USA, and the next 100 biggest countries. The "Microbe Nations" would be Monaco all the other table-top countries and tiny one-man-on-an-island republics, and they would also fight amongst themselves.