Gut Bugs
Gut Bacteria Tied to Weight Gain, Study Finds – washingtonpost.com
“This is very exciting,” said Barbara Corkey, an obesity researcher at Boston University. “We don’t know why the obesity epidemic is happening. People say it’s because of gluttony and sloth. I think there must be something else. It’s exciting to see some work being done on alternative explanations.”
Here’s an interesting story that ties in with that slate.com thing I was writing about yesterday. (Yesterday?) The idea is that people who are obese have a larger number of a certain kind of microorganism in their guts that make them extract fat and calories from food more efficiently. This would be a wonderful thing for a starving person. Not so good for someone who’s already fat. Now, because I’m a skeptical sort of person and — I hope — a person whose mind works in a scientific way, my first thought is: How do they know the gut organisms cause the obesity and not the other way around? Maybe being obese comes first. Maybe there’s something about being obese itself that leads this particular kind of microbe to set up shop in greater numbers.
Sing along with me, folks! You know the tune!
Correlation is not causation! Correlation is not causation!
Still, either way it’s pretty interesting.
This story fits in, too, with another post I made a few months ago about how MUCH of the functioning of our bodies on all levels depends upon the bacteria and other microbes that live within us. It’s pretty cool. It reminds me also of how our very atoms and their constituent parts are really constantly interacting and mingling and switching parts with all of the other atoms around us and throughout the universe.
Have I written this here before?
We’re lumps in a big atomic soup.
Posted by RebeccaHartong on December 20, 2006 under Uncategorized
Oddly enough this ties into something I was suggesting at the supper table the other night to my family. I said “Wouldn’t it be cool if they found a ‘bug’ that eats fat …” … here’s my “plan” … say each “bug” eats a certain amount of fat – let’s say 10 pounds – and then dies and is “pooped out” – along with the fat – that these bugs “condense” somehow … so you’re not pooping out a 10 pound bug! So then, they insert however many bugs you need … you need to lose 50 pounds, they put in 5 bugs (maybe not all once … say once a month or something) and viola! You poop out 5 bugs and 50 pounds! I wish I could invent this! I would be a gazillion-aire!
Someone will likely come up with a nanobot or molecular structure that does something like this. They’ll patent it. Only the rich will be able to get it. Then the nanobots will go haywire and all the rich people will gradually shrink away to nothing. Then, since most of them were likely young without wills, the state will seize their money and possessions and all of that will be redistributed to the populace at large and…
Wait. I think there must have been something special in those brownies I ate tonight.
Correlation is not causation. But one of the researchers put the “fat bacteria” (fermicules?) into thin mice. These mice became quite plump compared to the normally slim mice that didn’t get hit up with the “fat” bacteria but ate the same amount of chow. This suggests at least that once the bacteria are there, they help increase body weight, even in genetically thin animals. The interesting thing about these “fat” bacteria is they make more simple sugars readily available from good stuff like fruits and veggies. So anyone insulin resistant will get a double problem if they have these bacteria also. There was a lot of squawking from the energy balance folks when this study came out, because it seems that the same amount of food is not really the same amount for all people.
Heh, yeah, yeah… I realized that after I finished reading the article. (Which was after I’d blogged on it. Shame on me.)
Okay… so there’s a very strong suggestion of causation in THIS case.
It would be really nice if some folks could get a way of reducing the number of these bacteria in their own guts, eh? All the more reason for those kinds of folks to stay as healthy as they can until the day comes when a treatment of that kind is available.