Taureau
Administrator
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/...y-microbiome/595384/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
It’s simple: Eat less.
Sometimes combined with the directive move more, this mantra has a clear point. If you can’t lose weight, you are either stupid or lazy—or, probably, both. See also: Calories in, calories out.
But if things were that simple, diets would work. Middle-aged people would not suddenly start gaining weight despite eating and moving similarly year after year. No one would have to endure the presence of that one friend with the “fast metabolism” who can eat anything he wants. And who, even though he knows you’re on a diet, says through his overstuffed mouth, “I couldn’t even gain weight if I tried.”
Instead, it is becoming clear that some people’s guts are simply more efficient than others’ at extracting calories from food. When two people eat the same 3,000-calorie pizza, for example, their bodies absorb different amounts of energy. And those calorie-converting abilities can change over a person’s lifetime with age and other variables.
The question is, why? And is it possible to make changes, if a person wanted to?
If so, the solution will involve the trillions of microbes in our intestines and how they work in concert with another variable that’s just beginning to get attention. The immune system determines levels of inflammation in the gut that are constantly shaping the way we digest food—how many calories get absorbed, and how many nutrients simply pass through.
The relationship between microbes and weight gain has long been overlooked in humans, but people have known about similar effects in animals for decades. After World War II, antibiotics became affordable and abundant for the first time. Farmers began giving the drugs to their livestock—for example, to treat a milk cow’s infected udder—and noticed that animals who got antibiotics grew larger and more quickly.
This led to a flood of patent applications for antibiotic-laden foods for all sorts of livestock. In 1950, the drug company Merck filed a patent for “a method of accelerating the growth of animals” with “a novel growth-promoting factor” that was, simply, penicillin. Eli Lilly patented three new antibiotics to mix into the feed of sheep, goats, and cattle because the microbe-killing agents “increased feed efficiency.” In the ensuing decades it became standard practice to give livestock copious doses of antibiotics to make them grow faster and larger, even though no one knew why this happened, or what other effects the practice might have.
It’s simple: Eat less.
Sometimes combined with the directive move more, this mantra has a clear point. If you can’t lose weight, you are either stupid or lazy—or, probably, both. See also: Calories in, calories out.
But if things were that simple, diets would work. Middle-aged people would not suddenly start gaining weight despite eating and moving similarly year after year. No one would have to endure the presence of that one friend with the “fast metabolism” who can eat anything he wants. And who, even though he knows you’re on a diet, says through his overstuffed mouth, “I couldn’t even gain weight if I tried.”
Instead, it is becoming clear that some people’s guts are simply more efficient than others’ at extracting calories from food. When two people eat the same 3,000-calorie pizza, for example, their bodies absorb different amounts of energy. And those calorie-converting abilities can change over a person’s lifetime with age and other variables.
The question is, why? And is it possible to make changes, if a person wanted to?
If so, the solution will involve the trillions of microbes in our intestines and how they work in concert with another variable that’s just beginning to get attention. The immune system determines levels of inflammation in the gut that are constantly shaping the way we digest food—how many calories get absorbed, and how many nutrients simply pass through.
The relationship between microbes and weight gain has long been overlooked in humans, but people have known about similar effects in animals for decades. After World War II, antibiotics became affordable and abundant for the first time. Farmers began giving the drugs to their livestock—for example, to treat a milk cow’s infected udder—and noticed that animals who got antibiotics grew larger and more quickly.
This led to a flood of patent applications for antibiotic-laden foods for all sorts of livestock. In 1950, the drug company Merck filed a patent for “a method of accelerating the growth of animals” with “a novel growth-promoting factor” that was, simply, penicillin. Eli Lilly patented three new antibiotics to mix into the feed of sheep, goats, and cattle because the microbe-killing agents “increased feed efficiency.” In the ensuing decades it became standard practice to give livestock copious doses of antibiotics to make them grow faster and larger, even though no one knew why this happened, or what other effects the practice might have.