Microbes Contribute to Obesity
Dec. 20th, 2006 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theoriginalblurkerResearch at Washington University’s Center for Genome Sciences indicats that the bacteria in your gut affects your caloric intake from the food you consume.
It's an interesting article and, believe me, I would love to just increase a certain type of bacteria in my gut to help lose weight, but it was this excerpt that has me irked:
Who else here reads this as weight affecting gut bacteria and not as gut bacteria affecting weight? Is it just me?
It's an interesting article and, believe me, I would love to just increase a certain type of bacteria in my gut to help lose weight, but it was this excerpt that has me irked:
In a study of a dozen dieting people, the results also were dramatic.
Before dieting, about 3 percent of the gut bacteria in the obese participants was Bacteroidetes. But after dieting, the now normal-sized people had much higher levels of Bacteroidetes — close to 15 percent, Gordon said.
“I think that gut bacteria affects body weight,” said Virginia Commonwealth University pathology professor Richard Atkinson, who wasn’t part of the research team and is president of Obetech Obesity Research Center in Richmond. “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that and they showed that.”
Who else here reads this as weight affecting gut bacteria and not as gut bacteria affecting weight? Is it just me?
