Dr. Sushil Rudra

A large part of our body’s digestive system is a microbe: bacteria. A professor of Nutrition Dept of Illinois, did a lot of research to understand the effect of bacteria on food digestion and the resulting weight loss. So our post is about ” The Best Practices is to avoid of Junk Foods For Obesity”.

We mentioned one such study here. Here’s an idea of ​​what researchers see and understand about the bacteria in the human gut.

Introduction: Avoid Junk Food for Obesity

The trend of obesity is increasing alarmingly. Because obesity is associated with both physical and mental health problems (psychological problems especially from adolescence to middle age).

However, its burden has been a headache for parents, physicians, sociologists, and even scientists. On top of that, thousands of experts and companies are springing up like a frog nest these days touting how to get skinny fast.

So they are constantly inventing different diets and dieting methods, but many of these foods are largely unscientific.

In common sense, it seems that body weight depends on the frequency of eating and drinking. But the relationship is not at all linear.

Some suddenly become unhealthily thin by cutting down on food, while many dieters are unable to lose weight at all. That means weight doesn’t just depend on what you eat. So what is behind this gene-caused something?

When scientists were thinking about this, they noticed that there is a huge difference in body fat even between twins of the same parents. Undoubtedly, that is, there is a significant influence of something beyond diet and genes on obesity.

In their research, scientists discovered that some microorganisms (bacteria) living in our intestines have an important role behind obesity.

Many researchers are looking for exactly what the role is. Professor Geoffrey Gordon is one of them. There has been a number of works on this topic from his lab.

Today’s story is about an early task. This work was published in the journal Science in 2013 [1].

The problem : The Best Practice Is to avoid of Junk Foods For Obesity

The question was to what extent differences in gut bacteria are responsible for making people lean or fat.

To answer this, roughly speaking, two things need to be done. First, the species of intestinal bacteria must be determined.

To obtain a sample of intestinal bacteria, bacteria must be found in the fecal matter that comes out of the stomach after digestion.

Second, we need to understand what species of bacteria infect humans. It is not enough to see how many species of bacteria there are.

It is necessary to understand how much the contribution of the bacterial species and how much the diet contributes to the obesity.

How to understand that? Researchers found a way.

Research : The Best Practice Is to avoid of Junk Foods For Obesity

The research started with germ-free mice. They are specially bred in the laboratory so that they have no bacteria to speak of in their guts.

This type of rat is very useful. Human gut bacteria can be introduced into such sterile mice. Because they are sterile to begin with, when human bacteria enter them, the bacterial colonies on their bodies can represent those human bacterial colonies.

That is what was done in the research. Bacteria from lean humans were introduced into some germ-free mice and bacteria from obese humans into others [2].

The two types of mice were then fed the same food day after day.

What came out: The Best Practice Is Exclusive of Junk Foods For Obesity

It turned out that despite the same diet, the mice representative of obese people lost weight day by day.

And the representative mice of lean people remained the same.

That is, sterile mice were killed by simply changing the gut bacteria by keeping the diet the same.

The next research is more interesting. After bacterial inoculation, the two strains of mice were housed together in the same cage. One group consists of bacteria from fat people, another group from thin people.

Rats don’t mind eating each other’s poop (in the animal world this phenomenon is called coprophagy).

Hence, scientists noticed that after several days of being kept in the same cage, both types of mice remained lean. One of the mice did not become obese as in the previous experiment.

Here’s the thing to note: The Best Practice Is Exclusive of Junk Foods For Obesity

After eating poop and exchanging bacterial colonies, things tend to get leaner, not fatter.

The scientists deduced from this that the mice, which represented leaner people, had a greater diversity of bacterial species in their bodies.

Therefore , bacterial colonies in obese mice lack some of that diversity. After eating each other’s shit, both types of mice tended to be leaner as that lack of diversity was compensated for. (Other studies also found a lack of this bacterial diversity in the guts of obese people.)

Does this mean there is a bacteria-based solution to the problem of human constipation? Does the gut bacterial colony have a desirable state, except for extinction?

Eventually, scientists did much more research in Jeffrey Gordon’s lab. There will be more interesting stories about this next time.

References and other tidbits: The Best Practice Is Exclusive of Junk Foods For Obesity

[1] Gut Microbiota from Twins Discordant for Obesity Modulate Metabolism in Mice, Science, VOL. 341, NO. 6150

[2] The lean-obese pairs used in the experiment were all twins. An advantage of working with twins is that the genetic makeup is more likely to be identical.

So if one of the twins is skinny, while one is fat, focus can be directly on diet or bacteria. It is not necessary to think that the initial genetic makeup is different.

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