Pathogen from gut of obese human causes obesity in germfree mice

...It's not like the bacteria cause obesity as some articles suggest, their presence is itself a symptom of a nutritional problem (such as too much intake)....

How do you square this with the claim from the original article that giving mice a toxin produced by gut bacteria (Lipopolysaccharide endotoxin) causes obesity and insulin resistance, and that "[m]ono-association of germfree C57BL/6J mice with strain Enterobacter cloacae B29 isolated from the volunteer’s gut induced fully developed obesity and insulin resistance on a high-fat diet but not on normal chow diet, whereas the germfree control mice on a high-fat diet did not exhibit the same disease phenotypes"?

It's not "evil complex polysaccharides" wreaking havoc and producing energy out of thin air to make people fat, it's (as always) people eating too much who are bringing this upon themselves.

Why, then, do some people become obese when they eat as their instincts tell them, and others do not? For example, I eat whenever I'm hungry, stop when I'm full (or even overfilled), snack frequently while working (mostly nuts, dried fruits, and sometimes Fritos), and yet remain thin, while others eat carefully and remain obese. What's the difference?

You realize those bacteria are living off the fat, sugar and protein you consume right? They are essential to our ability to utilize the chemicals we get from these macro nutrients.

>Refined/processed food should be eaten in minimal quantities because it spikes blood sugar and causes insulin fatigue, which in the long run causes Type II diabetes. True, but this also an increasingly old school and one dimensional way of thinking about how type II develops. There are a host of genetic and environmental factors that effect an individual's response and eventual tolerance to insulin.

Sadly, being in med school does not guarantee you "know what you're talking about", in fact, even after you get to wear that white coat you'll probably realize you know way less than you could ever imagine. The perception that kind of attitude creates only narrows our minds and hurts our patients.

I'm done with med school.. and I realize on a daily basis I still have no clue what I'm talking about :)

> You blame everything on "behavior" then claim to have a food addiction.

This is certainly a gross mischaracterization, and I can only assume you're using it to aggravate me somehow? I invite you to read again what I actually wrote regarding this and several other different issues. I'm not sure if you're just trying to troll me or if you actually want to have a discussion, but I'll just assume you're not trying to behave like an asshole on purpose and move on.

You misunderstood my point about how gut bacteria take hold in the first place. Mostly, enterobacter strains are something which lives inside people's guts anyway. There are several pathogenic strains but this is not what the article is talking about. We're talking about an organism that lives off what you feed it. There is nothing hand-wavy about that. It's just a fact. Just as food intake determines individual weight-gain, the availability of nutrients in combination with its environment determines the amount present of a given gut bacterium. It's also a fact that our daily environment is rich in gut (and other) bacteria.

> It didn't just magically pop into existence from the ether because "you ate too much".

I failed to explain this properly then. People have a certain mixture of different gut bacteria inside them, they also tend to acquire them in the "hand-wavy" manner described above. Now, a bacterium needs to eat in order to survive and reproduce. Different bacteria are optimized to eat different things in different environmental conditions. If E.c. colony size is indeed statistically larger in obese people (a point that still needs to be shown conclusively), the reason for that will be that they get a lot of nutrients under favorable conditions. There is nothing magical about it, just basic biology.

> No, I likely cannot convince you of anything. But you are equally failing to convince me.

It depends where you're coming from. I'm not even sure we're speaking the same language, otherwise I can't explain how some of my points could have come across in such a distorted fashion (even taking into account my infamous inability to communicate). In some sentences you portray my views as exactly the opposite of what I actually said. I really mean it when I say I'm sorry we're at this point, but I'm also unsure what I could have done better.

Also, a meta point: have we done this before? I'm not sure.

There are a lot of people who are either obese and have tried everything and can't lose weight or are thin and have tried everything and can't gain weight. But your opinion is "some people just eat too much", apparently with no real cause. Equally, you are comfortable with "bacteria are everywhere -- if you eat too much you can grow them". You really aren't willing to admit that different people carry different bacteria due to exposure of some sort and this might be a factor in why some people "just eat too much". In your view, the eating too much has to precede the bacterial overgrowth. Seems awfully convenient. But people don't get AIDS or anything else because "well, germs are everywhere". They get AIDS from an infected lover or contaminated needles or due to exposure to some other specific vector. You can "eat too much" all day long and if you weren't exposed to a specific pathogen, you won't grow it.

I have lost enormous amounts of weight in recent years. I never counted calories. I had zero goal of losing weight. My only goal was to kill off the overgrowth of germs which were killing me. Last year, I lost so much weight, so rapidly that total strangers began stopping me in public places and asking me how I did it. I did not feel like getting into my medical situation, so I made vague noises about dietary changes and walking a lot. However, I am a sample of one, so that will also be dismissed by most members of this forum as "not scientific".

I really doubt this discussion will do much for either of us. I regret making my initial post. I really should know better by now, but my recollection was that you are a very reasonable member of the forum. So I chanced it.

Please have a good evening.