China researchers link obesity to bacteria

Chinese researchers have identified a bacteria which may cause obesity, according to a new paper suggesting diets that alter the presence of microbes in humans could combat the condition.

Researchers in Shanghai found that mice bred to be resistant to obesity even when fed high-fat foods became excessively overweight when injected with a kind of human bacteria and subjected to a rich diet.

The bacterium -- known as enterobacter -- had been linked with obesity after being found in high quantities in the gut of a morbidly obese human volunteer, said the report, written by researchers at Shanghai's Jiaotong University.

The mice were injected with the bacterium for up to 10 weeks as part of the experiment.

The experiments show that the bacterium "may causatively contribute to the development of obesity" in humans, according to the paper published in the peer-reviewed journal of the International Society for Microbial Ecology.

A human patient lost over 66 pounds in nine weeks after being placed on a diet of "whole grains, traditional Chinese medicinal foods and prebiotics", which reduced the bacterium's presence in the patient's gut to "undetectable" levels, the paper said.

One of the report's authors, Zhao Liping, lost 44 pounds in two years after adopting a diet of fermented probiotic foods such as bitter melon to adjust the balance of bacteria in his gut, the American magazine Science said in an article this year on his previous research.

Zhao's work on the role of bacteria in obesity is inspired by traditional Chinese beliefs that the gut is the "foundation for human health", Science reported...

It’s not so much a case of trying to eliminate enterobacter, both because it is a genus of all sorts of different bacteria, and it is ubiquitous, it is everywhere. Instead you want to *reduce* the percent of your flora it occupies. Again, think of bacteria physically “shouldering out” other bacteria to have space to live. (Lebensraum?)

The morbidly obese people who were examined were found to have about 1/3rd of their flora as enterobacter strains. This means maybe half a dozen enterobacter strains dominating a flora that should have a much more evenly distributed amount of them and 24-34 other types of bacteria.

The Chinese research noted that enterobacter strains are somewhat vulnerable to a more acidic environment in the GI tract, so this was the focus of their diet. But that can get complicated in a hurry, as it also depends on the kind of acid, the best being Hydrochloric, which kills enterobacter at pH 4.0 (stomach HCL has a pH of 1.5 to 3.5, but this is neutralized by bile at 7.5-8.8). It is probably not a good idea to try and acidify your GI tract by diet unless you have expert advice.

But probiotics work around the problem by flooding the GI tract with bacteria, which will gradually (1 month plus) muscle out much of the enterobacter.

Typically, gut bacteria reproduce about every half hour unless they are inhibited from doing so by other bacteria, so it is probably better to take a small (relatively speaking, though billions of bacteria) amount of probiotics at frequent intervals rather than one big horse dose.

One of the more interesting replacement bacteria is the genus of bifidobacterium, a common digestive bacteria that uniquely digests plant fibers, and is found in foods like Activa yogurt and unpasteurized sauerkraut. It uses “inulin” (not insulin), a soluble fiber found in non-starchy vegetables such as green beans, Asian vegetables, dark green leafy vegetables, summer squash and cabbage family vegetables like broccoli, kale and Brussels sprouts. So consuming the two together works even better.

Activa yoghurt is specifically used as for digestive bulk, like Metamucil, to support regularity. Since it can consume plant fiber, but enterobacter cannot, this gives a reproductive advantage to bifidobacterium. Bifobacterium is also found in Kefir.

I’d also add that new research has shown that broccoli has an ingredient that is extremely toxic to the H. Pylori bacteria, even hidden within tissues such as the stomach lining. H. Pylori is mostly associated with stomach ulcers and stomach and upper GI cancers, so it is good to slap it down as well as enterobacter. Yay, broccoli.

It was horrendous the way that they looked and I felt so sorry for them. There is no way they ate their way to that size.

In making that assumption you've forgotten one of the two important factors in weight.Yes,you've covered the calorie *intake* side of the equation but you've left out the *burning* of calories.If either of them burned *no* calories over a given period (impossible,of course) and took in 100 calories a day that person would,in time,gain weight.So,what happened to them is that they both *ate* their way and *sat on their fat a$$es watching TV and/or playing video games* their way to their massive state.Ask any registered dietitian (or physician),they'll tell you.

Or,just look at photos of the prisoners who survived their time building the Burma Railway.Backbreaking work + abysmally inadequate nutrition = rib cages sickeningly visible along with little,skinny legs.Google these photos if your memory needs refreshing.

“If you take in more calories than you burn you gain weight”

It is not that simple. Some people “take in” calories and “pass” many of them right back out again.

If two people eat the same food containing the same amount of calories, one of those people may have a system that is more efficient at extracting the calories from that food. The other person may pass more of those calories as waste. So if both those people burn the same number of calories one will end up weighing less than the other.

So it isn’t simple.

Of course, if you limit caloric intake to less than calories burned you will cause weight loss, that is true.

But you would need to limit it more in the first person I described and less in the second one.

Everyone will lose weight if starved.

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