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Pathogen from gut of obese human causes obesity in germfree mice

nature.com

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Re: Pathogen from gut of obese human causes obesity in germfree mice

#21

Post by michaelbrave »

schoper wrote: post #11

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…

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.

Re: Pathogen from gut of obese human causes obesity in germfree mice

#22

Post by jbattle »

splatcollision wrote: post #18

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…

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'?

Re: Pathogen from gut of obese human causes obesity in germfree mice

#24

Post by indiecore »

panzagl wrote: post #8
indiecore wrote: post #4

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 pa…

You're right, we should all lament the possible passing of another way of judging people inferior to us.

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.

Re: Pathogen from gut of obese human causes obesity in germfree mice

#25

Post by splatcollision »

jbattle wrote: post #22
splatcollision wrote: post #18

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…

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'?

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.

Re: Pathogen from gut of obese human causes obesity in germfree mice

#26

Post by jack-r-abbit »

not_that_noob wrote: post #17
jack-r-abbit wrote: post #13

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.

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.

So in theory, if a pill was developed to just kill that bacteria, fat guy loses weight.

Re: Pathogen from gut of obese human causes obesity in germfree mice

#27

Post by Alex3917 »

splatcollision wrote: post #18

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…

"[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/

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-w...

Re: Pathogen from gut of obese human causes obesity in germfree mice

#28

Post by LaGrange »

indiecore wrote: post #20
not_that_noob wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

It's funny, how you first said there's no magic bullet, then provided everyone with a magic bullet.

Re: Pathogen from gut of obese human causes obesity in germfree mice

#29

Post by pdx »

acgourley wrote: post #14
ChuckMcM wrote: post #9

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-…

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 belo…

The patient was not on antibiotics, he was on prebiotics. So, this is something you could do yourself without a doctors cooperation.

Re: Pathogen from gut of obese human causes obesity in germfree mice

#30

Post by splatcollision »

Alex3917 wrote: post #27
splatcollision wrote: post #18

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…

"[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/ CBD is one of the more common non-psychoactive cannabinoids in marijuana, and it is responsible for many of the ant…

Great points. The sooner this medicine can be freely accessible and available to all the better.
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