There is an interesting article on how imbalances in the microbial community in your intestines may lead to metabolic syndrome, obesity, and diabetes. I for one am happy to see there are people actually looking into the fact that obesity may be the symptom not the cause of many health issues, especially Insulin Resistance.

This won't allow me to post the link but google "Are Happy Gut Bacteria the Key to Weight Loss" and "Mother Jones"

Thanks for sharing this article, it's really interesting. I read about half of it, & may finish it later when I'm more awake & able to focus on it better. As someone who is obese & Insulin resistant, I am very glad to see so much research being done regarding causes & possible prevention.

Since I didn't finish it I don't know if the author addressed whole, natural foods vs. synthetic, overly processed foods but I, personally, think that that is what makes the difference in how our bodies process & react to what we eat. I know they talked about fatty, sugary junk foods, but I think the fact that a lot of what we eat is man-made is the problem. I read an article recently (I'll try to find it & share it) that talked about how GMOs hurt our "gut flora" while natural foods don't have the same negative impact. It's a very interesting topic & I plan to do more research on it.

I have to tell you all... since this has been getting so much attention I am absolutely OBSESSED. It fits so well with so much that has happened in my life.

I actually never took an antibiotic in my life until my Senior year of high school. That spring I got Walking Penumonia and took a dose. That year alone I gained 40 lbs that I was never able to lose.

My brother has been thin his whole life. Until about 5 years ago. He took wayyyy too many Alieve and his doctors gave him a colonoscopy. Thankfully the mass doses of Alieve were the problem. But colonoscopys are known to decimate your gut flora. He has also developed all kinds of problems like arthritis.

I never ever ever eat any sort of fermented food. I hate them. No pickles... no yogurt nada.

Do people lose weight better who eat non processed food -- NOT because they are eating healthy -- but because that food -- organic veggies has bacteria on it? Even if not organic... are you more likely to have some bacteria on veggies than a "processed food."

NSAIDS are known to disrupt gut flora as well. Every single TOM I suck that down for 2-3 days. Is this why women have a harder time losing as compared to men?

It simply boggles my mind what this could mean if true and treated.

We always talk about "metabolism" being destroyed by eating low calories. But what if... it is your gut flora... your gut just doesn't get the proper bacteria it needs when you are eating a small amount of food. If say, you ate a wide variety of non processed food at 1500 cals.. giving your body many varied strains of bacteria... I know several bloggers who preach this whole foods / organic produce eat as much as you want and are thin years after losing weight.

But if after starving your gut flora for 6 months to a year.. you go back to eating processed food... you will gain weight hand over foot?

Because you didn't repopulate your gut flora.

Thank you for sharing this article. I've been reading about magnesium helping with inflammation and its relationship to obesity. This just adds another piece to the puzzle.

Just as an example...

I take 4 Advil at least 2-3 times per week, and am on 3 daily medications as well as 3 "as needed" medications. I ate many, many Lean Cuiisines while losing weight, and still occasionally do. I have PCOS.

I lose weight without almost no drama. Cut back calories, lost weight. I've kept it off for over a year by keeping calories in check. I think sometimes we really WANT to find an "answer" that explains away most of our own culpability.

I was losing weight pretty steadily until last winter, January-ish when I was knocked on my @SS with a massive ear infection....FIVE rounds of antibiotics later, including two massive doses of an antibiotic used to kill meningitis, and my ear infection was gone...im surprised it didn't damage my ear or my hearing, it was HORRIBLE!!...at that point my weight loss STOPPED and since then has just slowed to a crawllllll....

I do eat yogurt but not regularly....I eat a mix of processed and unprocessed foods and I calorie count...maybe I should try some probiotics?

That is how I see it.. a piece of the puzzle. In the end, I am going to guess that there are like 5 major causes of this obesity epidemic and maybe 3 things that slow you down.

This is like one major cause.

The more we find out about these things the more we can fix.

there's also this article which talks about stool transplants inducing weightloss.

It may not ever help any of us dieters but gut bacteria research is super exciting!

I think a healthier digestive tract should theoretically increase weight gain but I have found since going wheat & gluten free & healing my digestive organs, I have effortlessly controlled calories & indeed lost weight.

A few studies suggested..

"that obese individuals had about 20 percent more of a family of bacteria known as firmicutes, and almost 90 percent less of a bacteria called bacteroidetes than lean people. Firmicutes help your body to extract calories from complex sugars and deposit those calories in fat. When these microbes were transplanted into normal-weight mice, those mice started to gain twice as much fat. This is one explanation for how the microflora in your gut may affect your weight."

I just want to know where I can buy Bacteroidetes supplement, in store and online, and a supplement that doesn't cost a king's ransom and preferably not from Pro Lab, Ltd. in Vancouver, BC. This company may very well be legitimate but their website is unprofessional (found at least one typo) and a lot of the "testimonials" could have been written about anyone's product. In fact, they read like they're about probiotics in general. The Pro Lab product isn't mentioned by name. I just can't see spending $89.95 ("this week only"), let alone the regular price of $169.95, for a 2 month supply.

I am just going to guess that you can't do it. I think the gut flora is so massive that any supplement is bound to have a small effect. But I found this article that seems to suggest you can influence the balance in your own body by eating certain foods.

Obesity is infectious intestinal disease, scientists say
30.09.2011


Obesity is infectious intestinal disease, scientists say. "I put on weight even if I look at a piece of cake," some people may often say. They are right. Many obese people find it extremely hard to lose weight. At the same time, a human being with a normal weight may not eat just for one day to lose up to a kilo of his or her weight. Why does it happen like that? Scientists say that the reason for obesity lies in intestines. Does it mean that obesity can be contagious?

Recipes of new magical diets and weight loss pills appear on a regular basis. However, the number of obese people in the world continues to grow. The share of overweight people among the adult population of the planet increased during the recent 12 years from 8.5 in 1997 to 14.5 percent in 2009 - by 6.5 million people. It goes without saying that some reasons that make people gain excessive weight are obvious (redundant nutrition or sedentary lifestyle, etc). However, there are many other important, albeit unknown, theories.

The phenomenon of infectious obesity became known as "infectobesity." The term was coined in 2001 by Indian professor Nikhil V. Dhurandhar.

There are as many as 100 quintillion bacteria living on a human being. Five hundred pairs of various bacteria species live inside the human body. The quantity of bacteria is the largest in the human intestines. One of the main functions of intestinal bacteria is to help the body digest food. The bacteria also protect the body from the intervention of pathogenic microorganisms. The bacteria also help us receive the maximum from the food that we eat. For example, they turn lipids into the nutrients that humans are capable of digesting.

Most of the bacteria can be divided into two groups: Bacteroidetes and Firmikutes. The Firmikutes participate in the decomposition of carb-rich food, whereas the Bacteroidetes decompose the food rich with proteins, as well as vegetable food. The intestinal flora of obese individuals is richer with the Firmikutes, whereas the people with normal weight have more Bacteroidetes in their intestines.

US scientists confirmed the theory of the Indian professor. Dr. Jeffrey Gordon, the chief of the Center for Genome Sciences in Washington published the results of the research in the November issue of Science Translational Medicine (2009). The scientists conducted the experiments on mice.

All mice are born with sterile intestines. The intestines get filled with bacteria during the first food intake. Obesity-prone mice - the ones born from obese mothers - have a larger percentage of the Firmikutes in their intestines as opposed to the mice with a normal build. The more carbs a mouse consumes, the faster the Firmikutes grow.

The entire system of obesity is like a snowball. The more you eat, the more Firmikutes appear in the intestines. The better the carbs digest, the more you want to eat, and so on and so forth.

The most interesting aspect that was revealed during the experiments was the following. Intestinal bacteria would change their structure against the background of a changing diet. When researchers transplanted the intestinal flora from fat to slender mice, the latter started putting on weight as well, even if they had a non-fat diet. However, the mice would put on weight only during a certain period of time. The researchers discovered that their intestinal flora would gradually change too. To put it in a nutshell, when the mice began to eat less, the Firmikutes would die and then be replaced with the Bacteroidetes. As a result, the mouse would lose weight.

The human intestinal bacteria work the same way. When a group of obese individuals was transferred to the diet with no sweet and no fat products, they lost 25 percent of their weight during a year. The people also lost a great deal of their Firmikutes. The latter were replaced with Bacteroidetes. \

Thank you Emma!

I didn't know where I should put this but since it adds more evidence to the bacteria debate I thought I would add it here. For the record I was a vaginal birth but was not breast fed.


C-Section Babies At High Risk Of Obesity
27 May 2013

Babies who are born through Cesarean section (c-section) are much more likely to become obese when they grow up compared to babies who are delivered vaginally, reveals a new study carried out in the U.K which included more than 10,000 children.

Around 33% of births in the U.S. are cesarean births, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the rate of c-sections is rising.

The study, led Dr. Jan Blustein, Ph.D., M.D., from the New York University of Medicine, analyzed data on a total of 10,219 British born children between 1991 and 1992.

Dr Blustein said that "there may be long-term consequences to children that we don't know about" associated with C-sections.

In fact, there have already been health risks linked to C-sections. One study revealed that C-section babies are five times more likely to develop allergies by age two than those born naturally.

Another study demonstrated that babies born by c-section are more likely to have asthma than babies delivered vaginally.

The aim of the study, which was published in the International Journal of Obesity, was "to assess associations of Cesarean section with body mass from birth through adolescence."
C-section babies weigh less than others at first, then more later on
On average, children born via C-section were 0.125 pounds lighter than those vaginally born.

The children were analyzed by the researchers at various points in their lives to evaluate their body mass.

By the time the babies were six weeks old, those who were delivered via C-section were already heavier than the others. This trend was consistent at the age of three, eleven, and fifteen years.

At the age of 11, those who were delivered by C-section were found to be 83 percent more likely to be overweight than those born vaginally.

The results were adjusted to account for factors such as mother's weight and whether they were breastfed.

Blustein wasn't able to confirm compellingly whether C-section deliveries are the major cause behind this trend. However, she said that if they are, it is likely due to the fact that unlike vaginally delivered babies, C-section babies aren't exposed to important bacteria during birth.

However, Blustein added:

"The other possibilities are (that) these are children that would have been heavier anyway. Being heavy as a woman is a risk factor for C-section, so that's the problem with trying to figure out whether this is real or if it's simply a matter of selection."



The findings of this study are in line with a similar study carried out at the Children's Hospital Boston, which suggested that C-Section can potentially double childhood obesity risk.

Great thread with some very interesting articles.

The Mother Jones article was especially interesting. It seems that some of the things that some (not all) dieters cut out while dieting, such as the orange juice and the bananas to cut calories and glycemic load, are the very things that we should be keeping in our diets to reduce inflammation and the cascade that it triggers. (Not that we should be eating the egg McMuffins particularly either.)

The other thing I found interesting was that Atkins, the old style, with fewer fruits and veggies is associated with gut bacteria associated with colon cancer - having done Atkins, and having had a very scary but thankfully noncancerous polyp, for which I had very anxiously waited for the biopsy results.

In another article, I read that your cells will release the weight when they are "sufficiently bathed in nutrients". I agree it is not only what we eat, but also what we don't eat that impacts us.