Quote:
Originally Posted by cherrypie
I knew it wasn't my fault! lol
did they consider that the food fat people eat may lead to a different type of bacteria in thier gut? maybe the different bacteria is a symptom and not the cause.
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In the research I've read, they did. That was the whole point of the experiments - to find out whether the bacteria types/levels were a cause of the obesity or the result of it. They manipulated the bacteria in the guts of lab rats, and found that by changing the bacteria types and levels they were able to cause weight gain or weight loss in the rats.
I think it's more of a self-perpetuating cycle issue than a simple cause-effect issue though. An unbalanced diet causes the bacterial imbalance, and the bacterial imbalance appears (at least in rats) to increase appetite. It also seems that the obesity can also make it harder for the good bacteria to flourish. So it may not matter which you acquire first the obesity or the bacteria imbalance, they feed each other.
Self-perpetuating cycles are common in obesity (and often they're not a stable cycle, they're a downward spiral)
Insulin resistance is like that too. Obesity can worsen insulin resistance and insulin resistance can worsen obesity.
Activity levels, pain, and obesity also have that relationship. The more obese you are, the more pain/discomfort you have when you are active, the more pain/discomfort you have, the less active you are, the less active you are, the greater your risk for weight gain. The more you gain, the more pain/discomfort you have - it can become an endless downeard spiral if you let it.
For many of these cycles, people can enter at different points. It can be a chicken/egg question, not always easy to see which came first.
With the obesity/activity level issue, my husband and I had very different experiences. For him, the pain/activity level decrease came before the obesity. He was very active and athletic until he started getting symptoms of the degenerative joint disease that he inherited from his mother. He was used to having an athlete's metabolism and appetitie, and when he became less active from the pain, he started gaining weight (but the gaining weight made it even harder to be active and increased his pain).
For me, obesity came first.
Really though, it didn't matter how we got onto the roller coaster, we've ended up on the same ride.
The "solution" is to reverse the cycle (which isn't always easy and in some cases isn't entirely possible).
Losing weight and gradually increasing exercise decreases the pain, which makes it easier to lose more weight and be more active.
Maybe it's Murphy's Law (or the law of gravity), but the upward spiral always seems to be much more difficult and slower than the downward one.