Germs and Body Fat (moved from ATSNN)

Jeffrey Gordon and Fredrik Backhed have discovered that your fat has less to do with your body and more with whats in it. The researchers study involved subjecting one group of mice to regular intestinal bacteria and the other in a germ free enviroment. Surprisingly the mice without the germs had 42% less body fat than the control. But when the clean mice were injected with the same microbes their counterparts were exposed to, their body fat increased by 57% in two weeks.



This is very good news. Now we know that its the microbes not your lifestyle that makes your body fat soar. I hope to see experiments on humans soon to really test it. And to think I've been blaming my metabolism all these years. But its really just the germs. What do you think about it?

Related News Links:
gordonlab.wustl.edu
www.pnas.org

I bet it's mostly bogus. At least to a major extent. I've seen first hand that it's all about how you eat and exercise. I strongly doubt that germs are the cause for obsiety. After all after countless studies showing that exercise and heatlthy eating keep you fit I doubt this one study changes things.

.
It would be hard to know at this point.
Parasites have been shown to have amazing, often suicidal, effects on higher organisms.

I think there is some possibility of this having some merit, but I think I would have to see much more evidence to find it convincing.

It would be easy to blame microbes for our own lack of ability to control ourselves.

We Americans and many other industrialized nations live in a time that runs completely counter to most of human history. We have an abundance of food rather than shortages and an irregular supply of it.

We likely have genetic inclinations to eat whenever food is available and to eat as much as we can. Our bodies are anticipating times of famine that never occur in our modern system.
in short we may be sort of programmed to stuff ourselves
.

Microbes as the reason for our obesity......maybe in some circumstances, but not as a blanket rule.....

Overeating is a definite cause and in addition to the genetic angle cited by slank, you have to consider that eating out is one of America's primary entertainments...

...I shudder to think the advertising budget of Mcdonald's alone.....a huge imlpication on how much some people want you to know that you can have a tasty meal whenever you want it....

Interesting article, however....