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The Effect of Internal Bacteria On the Human Body
meckdevil writes with this excerpt from the Miller-McCune magazine:
"In a series of recent findings, researchers describe bacteria that communicate in sophisticated ways, take concerted action, influence human physiology, alter human thinking, bioengineer the environment and control their own evolution. ... The abilities of bacteria are interesting to understand in their own right, and knowing how bacteria function in the biosphere may lead to new sources of energy or ways to degrade toxic chemicals, for example. But emerging evidence on the role of bacteria in human physiology brings the wonder and promise — and the hazards of misunderstanding them — up close and personal. ... Because in a very real sense, bacteria are us. Recent research has shown that gut microbes control or influence nutrient supply to the human host, the development of mature intestinal cells and blood vessels, the stimulation and maturation of the immune system, and blood levels of lipids such as cholesterol. They are, therefore, intimately involved in the bodily functions that tend to be out of kilter in modern society: metabolism, cardiovascular processes and defense against disease. Many researchers are coming to view such diseases as manifestations of imbalance in the ecology of the microbes inhabiting the human body. If further evidence bears this out, medicine is about to undergo a profound paradigm shift, and medical treatment could regularly involve kindness to microbes."
the real overlords
Your sad devotion to that ancient religion...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Vitals
Some are good, some are bad, but they're definitely always with us. Being able to control and shape them would definitely be beneficial.
I for one (sigh) welcome our new microbe overlords...
Knew it all along!
DAE read the full summary, and then immediately look to see if it was submitted by KDawson?
there are at least 10 times as many bacterial cells as "human" cells in our bodies and you can run many different bacteria on a human. So one might consider oneself bacteria and the body just a vehicle for your bacteria. Except for Bill O'reily. Bateria refuse to grow in him.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Wild (and almost certainly wrong) speculation here ...
But, anyway, one often experiences intestinal upheaval when travelling in other parts of the world. I tend to imagine that the new foreign bacteria are engaged in an epic battle with the original bacteria for supremacy (e.g. of the colon).
But what if different bacteria release different hormones and chemicals. Is there any chance that the bacteria that is prevalent in one part of the world nudge people in that part of the world to act in certain ways?
For example, what if a particular type of bacteria secreted hormones to make people feel hungry? Could that be a partial explanation of why people in certain parts of the world are heavier than in other parts. Realistically, probably not - but it would be pretty funny if the real reason Americans are overweight is because of the sub-species of bacteria prevalent in the USA.
And ulcers did eventually turn out to have a bacterial origin - so you just never know.
I know it's a bit of nit-picking in an otherwise fascinating and informative article, but this bit about bacteria directing their own evolution is quite unfounded and - I suspect - added to sensationalize a teeny bit.
Bacteria do engage in horizontal gene transfer, and so can shape their own genomes beyond relying on random mutation (which is perfectly reasonable and expected, given that us dumb eukaryotes have even figured out how to do that part pretty well). However, to suggest that the bacteria are making "intentional changes to their heritable scaffolding" with some kind of intelligence is anthropomorphizing a little overmuch, especially with this part: "To suggest that organisms as primitive as bacteria are capable of controlling their own evolution is obviously silly. Isn’t it?" Yes, bacteria can share genetic material and yes, some bits of material (plasmids!) seem developed almost explicitly to do this, but evidence of "intentions" or "control" behind their evolutionary direction is lacking. Bacteria share genes; the ones who pick up successful (eg, antibiotic resistance) genes survive and proliferate. Natural selection favors mobility of these situationally beneficial genes (and, one must note, only when they are beneficial; they otherwise drop rather rapidly out of the population) and the bacteria who harbor them, just like every other living thing on the planet.
Final note: no serious tree of life puts humans at the "apex." To do so is to misunderstand evolutionary theory: we are just as "evolved" as every other extant life form.
Sincerely,
A Pedantic Biologist
Bacteria isn't a small part of us. We are a small part of THEM....
\m/
fucking badass? Seriously? THAT'S AWESOME!
Umm, no its not. I've followed alternative medicine and alternative treatments for years. They can do a (real scientific) study for a certain cancer treatment and have astonishing results, but if you get cancer and go to the doctor, your treatment will be...radiation or chemo.
Research may be about to undergo a paradigm shift, but new, actual treatments, seem to run many years behind, if they see the light of day at all.
And no kidding, what they have just discovered, people in alternative medicine have known for decades. And for being right, they got called quacks.
Need proof? Read Enzyme Nutrition, by Dr. Edward Howell:
Dr. Howell is often called the "father of food enzymes." During the '30's and'40's of this century, he did incredible research to prove that food enzymes were an essential nutrient, and that cooking and processing of foods destroy them, thereby creating dramatic changes in our ability to digest food and remain healthy. This is a classic in the field.
> They are, therefore, intimately involved in the bodily functions that tend to be out of kilter in modern society
Antibiotics kill off all the bacteria, good and bad. Cooking and over processing kill off natural enzymes that would help digest the food.
The answers are all there, and have been there.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Holy shit! We have found the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
32303036 204D5620 41677573 74612042 72757461 6C652039 31307320 53696C76 65722F52 656400
In the 1800s, the world was focused on machinery: the industrial revolution. And when we looked at the human being, we saw a machine. Illness was a mechanical malfunction: fix it with surgery or other manual therapies -- massage and chiropractic also get going around this time. (Not an endorsement of chiropractic, just pointing out its the "the machine's out of whack!" ideology.)
In the 1900, the world became focused on chemistry -- it had little choice, as WWI, "the chemists war", forced awareness of it, and then we became aware of the pollution we were creating. "Mustard gas" and "DDT" became by-words. And when we looked at the human being, we saw a chemical reaction. Illness if a chemical imbalance: drugs! drugs! drugs! From antibiotics to antidepressants, drugs became the therapy of choice.
In the late 1900s and early 2000s, we've become focused on ecology. And now when we look at the human being, we start to see an ecology.
It's an interesting phenomenon, the way that how we see the world influences how we see ourselves. Classical Chinese medicine is based on a model of canals carrying nutrition between palaces and granaries -- the structure of the Chin empire. The ancient Greeks saw the classic four elements making up the world, and -- oddly enough -- found that the human being was composed of four corresponding humors.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
This article is a huge disappointment for me. We're giving up--this is what the article is advocating--at least from a pessimist's view (that is, mine). The basic argument I see presented is that--if we can't defeat them--let's work with them, even if they can be dangerous. The various examples given, say of C. difficile being mostly benign until it is stressed by changes in host physiology due to stress/surgery/etc. can be restated as follows "we ought to work by their rules because it is too difficult otherwise". If I were a troll I'd make an analogy with a Western government negotiating with the Taliban... The author and those whose opinion he builds are at best unprincipled pragmatists, and at worst cowards that betray the early great crusades of medicine such as Fleming's discovery of penicillin. I think that humanity ought to have as great a vision in medicine as in other endeavours such as space travel, and I offer my version of it: the eradication of all even potentially pathogenic bacteria living in the human host and continued guard against them by perpetual administration of new antibiotics and/or (possibly genetic) immunomodulation. We are nowhere near being able to pull of something like this and keep a person completely free of all bacterial life, but I see no theoretical barrier to achieving this in the future, especially with predicted advances in nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and so on. Bacteria can be very useful, but at the same time that is no reason to ignore that they also kill people and cause enormous amount of human suffering even in non-fatal attacks on their hosts. Is this really an acceptable compromise? Ask yourselves.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Gut Bacteria Causes Weight Gain
http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/News-gut-bacteria-causes-weight-gain-111209.aspx?xmlmenuid=51
laboratoryequipment.com — Switching from a low-fat, plant-based diet to one high in fat and sugar alters the collection of microbes living in the gut in less than a day, with obesity-linked microbes suddenly thriving, according to new research at Washington Univ. School of Medicine in St. Louis. The study was based on transplants of human intestinal microbes into germ-free mice.
Further, by sequencing the microbial DNA, the researchers determined that mice on the high-fat, high-sugar diet had a greater representation of microbial genes devoted to breaking down and processing simple sugars and other components of a western diet. They also showed these genes were activated in the mice eating the unhealthy diet.
Interestingly, when the researchers transplanted the gut microbial communities of humanized obese mice to germ-free mice, the recipient mice gained weight and fat, even though they ate a low-fat, plant-based diet. The researchers also showed that gut microbes and their genes can be passed on from generation to generation, suggesting that it is possible for mothers to pass their microbial communities to their children.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
(2.6)10**8 of us think this effort should be stopped. However (4.3)*10**9 of us think it should be permitted as a harmless biological release for Host object. Of this second group, (8.4)*10**6 think we should cause Host to make a fool of himself so he will not be tempted to act again in this manner. However, the majority of the second group favors directing the Host to post as AC so this release mechanism will remain available for future situations in which Host suffers suboptimal adaptation to the Host macro environment regarding reproduction, individual status, and acquisition of food.
- 4FK00BAE3
In Soviet Russia, bacteria inhabit you.
^--Above is only funny because it's true.
---
Off topic: My captcha is micros. Oh but for the want of the letters b and e.
Link to real scientific (peer reviewed if you please) study please.
Chemicals are better: bad bacteria can be killed off by antibiotics, and good ones can be replaced by administration of appropriate enzymes etc. If you have trouble, say, killing off some of the bacteria, that just means your chemicals aren't good enough yet. With your world view, we have to be at the mercy of the bacteria and play by their rules. I do not accept that.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
The real reason Americans are overweight is because they have been convinced to switch to a primarily sugar diet, and when that leads to being fat, they are told that they should starve themselves, try to make up for the effects of starvation with muscle building exercise, and eat an even higher ratio of sugar to other foods. This has been a vicious circle of ever worse diet since sometime around the early seventies when someone had the brilliant idea that since sugar has less calories for it's mass than fat, people will take in less calories and be thinner if they just eat sugar.
I've recently heard of a strain of TB being injected in the the stomach to battle stomach cancer that is already being done. The patient is male and I'll let you guess where they inject it through to get to his stomach. He has to leave it in for a certain amount of time and then urinate followed but a half a gallon of bleach down the toilet to render it dormant. Guy says it seems to be working and feels much better after then chemo.
Research may be about to undergo a paradigm shift, but new, actual treatments, seem to run many years behind, if they see the light of day at all.
I'll grant you this point, but it's probably for the better. Would you rather new treatments were rushed to market without real science to back them, and let patients discover the side effects for themselves?
Need proof? Read Enzyme Nutrition, by Dr. Edward Howell:
No thanks. Howell's theories are outdated and largely unsupported by modern food science.
Antibiotics kill off all the bacteria, good and bad.
This is a popular fallacy, but not all antibiotics are effective on all forms of bacteria -- as anyone who has had to get a prescription for antibiotics from a doctor knows. Doctors choose the antibiotics to use based on the family of bacteria they want to destroy.
Cooking and over processing kill off natural enzymes that would help digest the food.
That might be true, but enzymes are best understood as catalysts for digestion, not essential parts of the process. They can help speed digestion, but their lack won't prevent it. Your stomach is full of hydrochloric acid -- that's going to break down most any food you throw in there. In addition, digestive enzymes don't have to come from food; they are secreted by the salivary glands, the stomach, the pancreas, and glands in the intestines. What's more, there are other ways to make nutrients from food more accessible, and one of them is cooking -- something humans have done to their food since the dawn of human history. The idea that humans should stamp out the fire and go back to eating raw vegetables now is pretty silly, and is based more on modern reactionary vegan movements than on science.
Breakfast served all day!
To add to your (almost certainly wrong) speculation, here's a couple of 'what-ifs':
That disease that (some claim) makes people hoard cats, and a short story by David Brin about a disease that makes people want to give blood, thus spreading the disease.
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
Denature, actually. Nothing kills enzymes, as they're not alive.
Wild (and almost certainly wrong) speculation here ...
Yup, that's the best kind.
But what if different bacteria release different hormones and chemicals.
Gut bacteria that secrete human hormones would be really bad. I'm pretty sure they'd have terrible health consequences.
My understanding is, bacteria secrete their waste just like our cells do. Anything more elaborate than waste would only be released by the bacteria's cell wall breaking.
Eww! Puke-a-tronic!
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Imbalanced Humors are finally back in style, yeehaw!
The Human Proteome Folding project on IBM's Distributed Computing grid is about to crunch some data related to our internal bacteria:
http://homepages.nyu.edu/~rb133/wcg/thread_2010_10_10.html
Head to www.worldcommunitygrid.org to sign up and donate some electricity towards this project!
Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side.
Or, more concretely, these out-of-kilter things (metabolism, cardiovascular processes, defense against disease) wouldn't be so out-of-kilter if people hit the gym regularly, ate a balanced diet of fresh food, and went easy on the antibiotics.
Or is that already the essence of this new medical enlightenment?
Kimchi, a traditional Korean food, is a well-known lactic acid-fermented vegetable product, and is a good source of industrially useful lactic acid bacteria (LAB). The microorganisms involved in the fermentation of kimchi include approximately 200 species of bacteria and several yeasts. The LAB involved in this fermentation continuously produce organic acids after an optimum ripening time, and cause changes in the composition of the product, referred to as the over-ripening or acid deterioration of kimchi.
The over-ripening of kimchi is the most serious concern when it is in storage. Since the over-ripening is mainly due to acid-forming LAB, the best way to overcome this issue is to control the growth of LAB without destroying the quality of the end product. The LAB play an important role in the taste of kimchi, and many LAB from kimchi have antimicrobial activity in addition to other useful properties.
Recently, scientists at Chosun University investigated LAB from kimchi as molecular sources for various end products, including antimicrobial compounds. Antimicrobial compounds are relatively abundant in traditionally fermented foods, in which they may play an important role as competitors with natural microflora during fermentation. Antimicrobial compound-producing LAB may be useful in preserving kimchi. This can be done by either directly applying the LAB to the culture or by adding LAB-produced antimicrobial compounds as natural bio-preservatives.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/193478661.html
Kimchi's probably the best example of the benefits of fermented food, but more familiar foods like yoghurt and sauerkraut are also good to eat.
High energy can break the peptide bonds resulting in fragments that will never spontaneously reform. Thus "killing" is a reasonable term for destruction.
There are so many "alternative medicine" theories that whenever science finds proof for anything, some quack can point to vague assertions made years ago that seem true on the surface. Of course, when probed in depth, it usually becomes clear that there are as many wrong assertions as right. The proof, as always, is in the experiment. When you do the experiments and find truth, you get the credit as you should. When you make wild claims based on anecdotes then you get ignored.
Of course, any decent scientist or physician will also realize that using terms like proof and truth are covering up the way science actually works, but I'm using the colloquial meanings here. If you're using a treatment that hasn't undergone an experiment, you're probably doing more damage than benefit.
I use the Paleo Diet.
what if there were no hypothetical questions?
You are controlling evolution every moment you keep living, and also when you stop doing that.
All life on earth dies because bacteria sooner or later damages our cells by engaging in gene transfer, making all replacement cells have little defects that over time (decades) makes us frail and weak (as in, elderly).
I've actually wondered about this while using antibiotics before. Seems weird and stupid.
it would be pretty funny if the real reason Americans are overweight is because of the sub-species of bacteria prevalent in the USA.
I no longer have to use the "I'm just big boned excuse." ?
These facts by themselves may trigger existential shock: People are partly made of pond scum.
I've met some people who simply are scum.
Write RO1 proposing formulation of gut flora's effect on disease x.
Get grad students to torture nude mice.
Measure 10% effect
Profit.
Write RO1...increment formulation repeat
I brew mead, and it's suprising how many people don't know how I get the bubbles into the drink.
I like looking at their shocked/disgusted expressions when I explain to them that it's the yeast that eats the honey and pisses alcohol and farts carbon dioxide. =)
Maybe MS (the other one) are making people stupid with their anti-biotics. It would explain a lot - like everything since FDR or there about.
... now I get it! Christine O'Donell is a bacteria.
I can barely afford the medicine of today. The medicine of tomorrow is well out of my reach, unless of course I can managed to remain indentured to a spendy health plan.
...welcome our new diminutive overlords.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
If Microsoft would just write a freakin' OS that wasn't vulnerable to bugs, we wouldn't have this problem!!!
Probitoics and chlorella. Both are great for the gut and very useful as building blocks for the rest of the body.
the litany of bacterial talents does nibble at conventional assumptions about thinking: Bacteria can distinguish “self” from “other,” and between their relatives and strangers; they can sense how big a space they’re in; they can move as a unit; they can produce a wide variety of signaling compounds,
So, they're intelligent. They lead complex and social lives.
including at least one human neurotransmitter; they can also engage in numerous mutually beneficial relationships with their host’s cells.
Some of them are our benevolent "masters". They're similar to dog/horse breeders in that they control how we develop over time, and do so to their own ends. Much like a breeder will breed a dog for bird hunting, combat or for company. But like breeders, they also care about us and our well being. Who knows how much they've engineered multicellular animals?
They control us as much as they need to. Bacteria let us live our lives, making nations, exploring the planet and so on, as long as that suits their needs. Recently our masters have decided it's time to start moving onto space, and humans have been chosen for that purpose, and many others.
Even more impressive, some bacteria, such as Myxococcus xanthus, practice predation in packs, swarming as a group over prey microbes such as E. coli and dissolving their cell walls.
Other bacteria don't like us, nor do they like our masters. And our masters protect us as best they can.
Unfortunately, lately humans have been misbehaving like a dog who thinks it has risen in rank above its master. We're literally biting the hand that feeds us. This makes it hard for our masters to control us and protect us.
I read somewhere last year, that rain clouds are usually full of bacetria that change their cell walls to start causing droplets. It seems that bacteria control when clouds will drop down as rain. So bacteria also control weather. Lately the bioshere has been changing very rapidly, and this has pissed off many types of bacteria that rely on those ecosystems. So we, along with our masters, are becoming very unpopular.
With science in this new age dawning, we discover that the "spirits" that shamans talked about and said had formed the world, are different forms of bacteria.
With technology we once again learn to communicate to the "spirits" that control the world (but with other means than drums and chanting).
We also learn about the sinister plot (splot?, splat?) against us (where E.Coli is just one of the grunts doing the dirty work). With our growing unpopularity, more of the bacteria are siding against us.
The war has begun...
So, is that totally over the top? =)
Yeah it has nothing to do with all the fat that's consumed, because it's so much easier for the body to turn sugar into fat than to turn fat into fat. (sarcasm) Sugar intake is not the single scapegoat.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
The high-temperature ultra-pasteurization of milk makes it last longer by rendering it almost inedible to bacteria. You digest everything with the aid of bacteria. Give some raw milk a try, or just some "normal-heat" pasteurized milk(good luck finding some), and I'm betting it'll treat your belly right. It does for me.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
It was just the bacteria talking....
That is all well & good but when you have no immune system then all the bacteria in your body is bad bacteria.
Really bad bacteria.
I got Leukaemia last year (the Hairy Cell variety) and the chemo killed what little of my immune system remained.
The result was 12 days in intensive care, high doses of IV antibiotics.
This really taught me about the good stuff vs the bad stuff.
Cooking and over processing kill off natural enzymes that would help digest the food.
[... enzymes] can help speed digestion, but their lack won't prevent it. Your stomach is full of hydrochloric acid -- that's going to break down most any food you throw in there.
Not always. The human body does not produce all essential enzymes. Now, I don't know very much about alpha-galactosidase -- but apparently it is an enzyme necessary for the digestion of oligosaccharides in beans. The human body does not produce it on its own, (or if it does, not enough of it,) which ultimately results in the flatulence commonly associated with bean consumption.
http://www.amazon.com/Good-Germs-Bad-Survival-Bacterial/dp/0809016427/ref=sr_1_1
I'd rather live at the mercy of the bacteria, which is very natural and is what we've been doing since the very beginning, than live at the mercy of pharmaceutical companies.
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Support bacteria. They are the only culture some people have.
Love salty crackers? catchy electronica? Try !
So the story of eating extremely old egg-salad sandwiches from restroom vending machines is true after all..
Research may be about to undergo a paradigm shift, but new, actual treatments, seem to run many years behind, if they see the light of day at all.
I'll grant you this point, but it's probably for the better. Would you rather new treatments were rushed to market without real science to back them, and let patients discover the side effects for themselves?
well actually
There are quite a few commercially available products that contain bacteria with well-documented health benefits.
I know of one product that claims to be very effective in 80% of cases of colic in infants, and it's backed up with many
solid scientific studies. Due to regulations it is sold as a supplement and not a drug.
That's just one example out of many.
There have been studies made on the treatment of allergies, IBS, metabolic syndrome, prevention of infection, cholesterol levels, colic, growth curves of prematurely born infants, tooth decay, helicobacter pylori and many other areas.
This field is in no way new, it's just that mainstream medicine is a bit slow on the uptake.
It will be interesting to see what happens in the future.
TFS: Many researchers are coming to view such diseases as manifestations of imbalance in the ecology of the microbes inhabiting the human body.
Which, if you follow the proposition that local balance is only possible within a system that is globally balanced, gives another perspective regards the Gaia principle.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Thank you http://cabalvideo.com
For example, what if a particular type of bacteria secreted hormones to make people feel hungry? Could that be a partial explanation of why people in certain parts of the world are heavier than in other parts.
or if some bacteria suppressed appetite and certain people took lots of antibiotics while never going out of doors, or something
If untreated it may cause more harm to your life than actual bacteria.
FRA: STFU GTFO
Perhaps you could make your post more informative, by showing us both the mechanism for converting sugars(and starches) to body fat, and the mechanism for converting dietary fat into bady fat - And demonstrate that the second is "easier" than the first.
For extra credit you can shoot for insightful and show us that the body stores fat even when glucose(blood sugar) levels are low.
FRA: STFU GTFO
I don't care if the bacteria inside me goes to war cos I travel, but why do I end up SHITTING myself nigh unto death over it?
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Don't worry, eating a kebab won't make you go jihad on your family.
thanks for that. Had heard of former, just read the latter. Excellent stuff!
Huh? You want him to try to prove things that are impossible? That is a nice punishment, but I am afraid that the way you explain it, that other readers would think that what you wrote relates in some way to reality, which it doesn't.
They're overweight because they eat too much.
They've trained themselves to eat huge portion sizes "super size that". And as they waddle away from lunch, stomach distended, they don't say "Oh, that was a lesson. I'll just have a light salad next meal" they start thinking about snacks.
They're not starving, a starving human rapidly converts body fat into energy.
The "fat but starving" thing is bullshit from people with no grasp of biology, determined to foist their provably wrong ideas on vulnerable fatties. Sure, they'll get better by eating tofu and celery sticks - if you can stop them also munching a family-sized bucket of chicken every evening and a whole pizza for lunch.
When you live in a country surrounded by obese people, the signs saying "free if you can eat the whole thing" are a give away as to how you got there. The people buying a product labelled "three portions" and stuffing the entire thing into their mouths as a snack. The people who don't know how to watch a movie without an entire bucket of popcorn AND a sweet fizzy drink.
Similarly, nothing can kill Linux processes, as they aren't alive either. ;-)
Just make you grow an annoyingly thin mustache and wear polyester.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Dude, Americans can't find any food with sugar in it. Everything is made with "high-fructose corn syrup" nowadays.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
>And ulcers did eventually turn out to have a bacterial origin - so you just never know.
However, highlighting the odd relationship between bacteria and the human body some research now points to the fact that the drop in number of people infected with Heliobacter pylori is directly related to the increase in people suffering reflux as the bacteria helps regulate the strength of sotmach acid.
The Economist -subscription required
So you do just never know...!
wow, maybe the chinese "qi" is just a bunch of bacteria.
One might add, however, that it is natural to have a taste for sugar, too; sugar usually indicates fresh fruit which provides vitamins and other things you need to survive. Furthermore, there is nothing in nature (other than honey) that actually has a very high sugar content, so the desire for sugar does not automatically lead to problems in more primitive peoples (sorry for not being PC there): there just isn't a source of sugar abundant enough to lead to the problems you describe. Even honey is a comparatively rare find, and not easy to harvest (the bees WILL object to you taking it).
So, long story short, we're a victim of our own success there. We developed this craving for sugar, and we didn't develop anything to keep it in check because there wasn't a need to develop anything like that. Now we've got the ability to produce arbitrary amounts of sugar-ladden food, and our lack of a temperance mechanism is causing problems.
Yes, yeast piss is dangerous to consume. It's full of very tiny disease-causing yeast and bacterial homunculi. No, that's not right. It's actually sterile when excreted from the yeast cell, but if the (male) yeast cell gets a forked eye and squirts all over the toilet seat, the sticky residue breeds disease-causing bacterial homunculi. No, that's not right either. Yeast don't argue about the toilet seat. The whole analogy seems broken beyond repair. If I had fallen for the Gerry Germ propaganda back in grade three, maybe I'd now fall for the ruse that disgust is scale invariant. Have I told you the one about the soiled electron?
There was a lot of similar crap back in the days of Gerry Germ. The next school year, I was struggling with the idea of "cold blooded" dinosaurs. I got the idea that dinosaurs might be like lizards and not croak immediately if their body temperature fell to ambient, but I never cottoned to the idea that dinosaurs didn't quaff Gatorade to cool down after an intense one-on-one. I think my science teacher at the time was a bit tenuous on the distinction between homeostatic and exothermic.
My next science teacher was adamant that fossil fuels were non-replenishable, which struck me as a chemical impossibility unless petroleum was a byproduct of supernovas as governed by their rigid cosmological schedules. Later I figured out that "non-replenishable petroleum" was a statement of science by someone with bills to pay. From the point of view of paying your bills, petroleum is non-replenishable. I don't recall my science teacher once mentioning that uranium is non-replenishable, and this was well before Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, so it wasn't yet clear this wouldn't soon become your typical tax-payer's favorite whinge.
We're pretty stupid for the most part about plants, too.
Stefano Mancuso: The roots of plant intelligence
In addition to (bacteria==pathogens==germs) and (dinosaurs==lizards with giant bodies and small brains) and (petroleum==Genesis project) and (plants==passive and simple minded) there was the depiction of the electron as a tiny point mass, or sometimes an advanced mention of an atom's "cloud of electrons", but never any mention of hydrogen's "cloud of electron". Until you get the idea that one is a crowd, you don't get anything. You have to go one step beyond the misanthrope's creed (one's company, two's a crowd) to really _get_ quantum physics.
These days the biologists are tapping into the poets ("I contain multitudes") and it turns out that "one" is an entire ecosystem, even if it still takes two to tango. I might have cracked the sanitization of this in elementary school, but my books and teachers were strangely silent about the urogenital baton-pass routing around the bath soap. At least in this case they had a coherent motive for keeping the lights dim.
Is there any chance that the bacteria that is prevalent in one part of the world nudge people in that part of the world to act in certain ways?
I believe this was covered already.
-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
If people read the full article they will see that your speculation is not wrong though the mechanism may be different. To everyone that knows the "real reason" people get fat keep in mind that billions of dollars and incredible effort to develop drugs, behaviour modification, and exercise programs that reduce weight have failed. Much of what we "know" will be proven wrong.
Dietary sugar into fat and dietary fat into fat is about as simple. Sugar leads to insulin secretion which leads to storage and more sugar craving; the is especially true in the evening (lower insulin sensitivity). Fat is important in that it's more energy dense than carbohydrates; 9 kcal/gram for fat as opposed to 4 kcal/gram for sugar (roughly).
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
You've just got big bacteria.
The real reason Americans are overweight is because they have been convinced to switch to a primarily sugar diet, and when that leads to being fat, they are told that they should starve themselves, try to make up for the effects of starvation with muscle building exercise, and eat an even higher ratio of sugar to other foods. This has been a vicious circle of ever worse diet since sometime around the early seventies when someone had the brilliant idea that since sugar has less calories for it's mass than fat, people will take in less calories and be thinner if they just eat sugar.
No offense, but what part of "paradigm shift" did you miss? Parent is correct to wonder, and could be on to something. The problem with a reply like your own is that you're completely ignoring the topic, the idea behind it, and any possibilities therein. That's fine, but sticking with the existing knowledge and assumptions without paying even lip service to the idea in the topic is just, well, odd.
This is a popular fallacy, but not all antibiotics are effective on all forms of bacteria -- as anyone who has had to get a prescription for antibiotics from a doctor knows. Doctors choose the antibiotics to use based on the family of bacteria they want to destroy.
Don't be pedantic, it's contrary to good discussion. The point, that you're likely to be unable to deny, is that antibiotics could well be killing off stuff that we'd be better off keeping. Unintended consequences and all that.
It's right there in TFS:
If further evidence bears this out, medicine is about to undergo a profound paradigm shift, and medical treatment could regularly involve kindness to microbes.
Whether this means no antibiotics or just better ones, remains to be seen.
Now you're just being silly.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Dude, "hgh-fructose corn syrup" IS sugar. Half the problem is that most Americans don't know what sugar is. Apparently you don't either.
This is more naiive and dangerous than you think. All arguments such as yours asusmes two things which are provably false:
1) The body is a perfect, perpetual motion machine (seriously, no educated person would assert perpetual motion ever works except when they're talking about "fatties"), not only that they compound this by assuming everyone's body works so similarly there's no real difference.
2) That 100 calories of one food work and process than same as 100 calories of any other food.
Really? Science hasn't clued you into the fact that we're symbiotic with all that bacteria and other stuff living in or on us? A good portion of our DNA isn't even our "own" anymore, rather the result of viral infection being passed to offspring over thousands of years (take that you IDers!).
Something as simple as the combination of amino acids it takes to break down each food you've ingested can have a huge effect, and no, not everyone has the same amounts of these either.
Btw, I'm not arguing that those folks who down a bucket of chicken every night for dinner won't be fat, by and large they will be. But the very fact that you see folks eat just as crappy and remain mostly thin (or a minor beer gut on the male version) ought to also be a big freaking wakeup call. Guess what, their activity level and muscle mass do not the caloric difference make (seriously, do you know how much jogging it takes to burn off the extra 2000 calories some people consume, fat and thin alike?).
So, please, educate yourself, you're enough right to delude yourself into thinking you've got it down, but trust me you don't. There have even been outlier cases, such as one woman provably consuming 1200 calories a day and looking amazingly obese. She had an actual (not pretend) hormone problem, once they fixed it, she went up to a healthy amount of calories per day and lost 150 pounds. If there's outliers like that I think even a denier like you might be willing to believe that more common, less severe cases may exist (bell curve anyone?).
Apparently you did not read the parent's post where he hypothesized about Americans being heavy because hormones secreted by bacteria make them eat too much. Then you apparently missed where I pointed out that over eating is not the problem. A primarily sugar diet is.
I didn't miss "paradigm shift". I also didn't miss it when it happened in the 70's causing many of the current health problems.
Not only did you miss it, you're dismissing it.
Why do American suffer more from this than, say, Brazilians? Wouldn't they have greater access to cheap sugary products than we do?
There could be a microbial cause, and you're not discussing that at all. You already think you have the answers, do you not?
40 years of thinking like you has only increased the average size of Americans. The "Calories eaten - Calories burned" is a myth foisted on people that don't understand biology, and overeating is a symptom of what people like you tend to point out as the solution. The human body does not turn everything it consumes into energy. Much of it passes through. It also instructs us as to when it needs more energy. Taking in a huge amount of fuel that is a "use it now or store it as fat" fuel, leaves them hungry no matter how much they eat. Eating food that digests slowly leaves them satisfied. Unfortunately they have been convinced that slower digesting food (fat) is "bad". People leave the table while stuffed thinking of snacks because they just ate what people like you call "healthy" food. Food that is all sugar. If they had eaten a nice fatty piece of meat, they would be walking away feeling satisfied.
No, they wouldn't. Why would Brazilians have greater access to cheap sugary products than we do?
It means EVERYONE has at least a little bit of culture...
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Sugar cane is and has been a factor of their culture for a very long time. Not so much here.
I've long heard about people with a compulsion to eat dirt - ascribed to a mineral deficiency. Maybe a bacteria deficiency instead, or in addition? (It's somewhat easier to contemplate than a "fecal transplant", anyway.)
Ahhh...You seem to be confused about what sugar is. Sugar comes from many sources. Not just sugar cane. Of course, your confusion is common, and a major reason why so many people have weight problems. They eat a ton sugar and think that it is healthy because it isn't fat, and it isn't cane sugar.
If they had eaten a nice fatty piece of meat, they would be walking away feeling satisfied.
And fiber too. I can't eat more than a handful of nuts or one apple. Minimally-processed foods in general tend to be filling. Too much fructose is bad, though - a pound of apples a day won't keep the bariatric surgeon away.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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People leave the table while stuffed thinking of snacks because they just ate what people like you call "healthy" food. Food that is all sugar.
Uh huh. Show me one sane source that says sugar is healthy. I don't remember anybody ever thinking sugar is healthy. Even those who think stuff like aspartame should be avoided, only think sugar is healthier than those substances, not healthy in itself.
Would you rather new treatments were rushed to market without real science to back them, and let patients discover the side effects for themselves?
If they really want to, yes. Most people will look for certified and tested products. Seeing as the only alternative is to threaten patients, doctors, and vendors with theft and/or rapecages, allowing patients to experiment with medicines is the more moral choice. Since nobody has infinite financial resources, medicine/treatment consumers will usually seek products and services with positive reputations to maximize their purchasing power. Granted, some people still buy potato chips, but we can't seek to control all behavior.
If it's all above-ground, problems can be handled with the courts and with counter-advertising. By keeping the stuff illegal, patients still get the treatments they want (perhaps to a lesser degree) but have little recourse and cannot inform the market when there are problems.
You only need to look at my blogspam queue to see how active the underground medicine market is.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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Um, no. Not in the least. You're grasping at straws here, so I'll just let you have the last word on the matter and move on. Have a great day!
Sugars come in several varieties, including simple, and complex.
Starches are a kind of sugar, just a very complex one. they get broken down by enzymes in your saliva into maltose, dextrose, and glucose. All simple sugars.
This breakdown process requires time, so starches satisfy longer than a heavy intake of simple sugars would, but they still metabolize mostly into fat if taken in high concentration.
fats on the other hand, require a considerable energy expense to digest. They need bile to help break it down, and acids in the stomach and small intestine are not so effective at digesting them since they are nonpolar, hydrophobic molecules.
Roughly, your body absorbs nutrients in about this order:
1) Simple sugars (these start to hit your bloodstream as soon as they enter your mouth. Literally.)
2) Starches (these take a few minutes to start hitting your bloodstream, but usually are starting to hit it by the time it has been churned in your stomach awhile.)
3) Proteins (These are more effected by acids than fats are, and get absorbed as broken down amino acids in your small intestine for the most part.)
4) Fats (A good portion of these make it out with your feces totally undigested. This is especially true if you eat the recommended amount of fiber, since the fiber sucks up the fat, and keeps it away from your body.)
The biggest things that americans can do to cut down on their bloat and bulk is to eat ALOT more fiber in their diets, and to cut down on the simple sugars and starches. Starches arent so much of a problem if they are eaten sensibly, and eaten with a good source of fiber.
Sadly, "Fast Food" usually comprises of fat (fried in oil), potatoes (starch, little fiber), heavily processed white bread (stripped of almost all fiber, has added simple sugar, high starch, low protein), and excessive protein. Taken together, it allows the fat to stay in the colon unsequestered long enough to be a health risk for both colon cancer and for obesity. the simple sugars present in the bread alter the way digestion happens, and also suppress satiety, making you more likely to supersize; (especially if you follow up with a large soda).
The end result is that your body readily absorbs way more calories than it needs, you poop out very little, and you get fatter.
the reason that the fast food industry removes the fiber from the wheat flour used to make the white bread for use in the fast food industry is because foods that are high in fiber take more time to eat, because you have to chew it more to swallow it, because of the added toughness and bulk that the fiber gives. It also reduces the preparation time radically, allowing a faster turn-around on the production floor.
Americans would drop the pounds radically in just a few years if a few new laws concerning food preparation from processed food companies went into effect:
1) Dont add sugar or high fructose corn syrup to bread dough that is supposed to non-sweet.
(I'd bet you a dollar that your loaf of bread sitting in your breadbox contains high fructose corn syrup. "Traditional bread" contains 3 ingredients: Flour, Water, Yeast. What does your bread have in it?)
2) Specify that the maximum fiber removal from white bread flour is 50% of whole wheat flour yields.
3) Dont substitute sugars of any kind for fats.
That would make it so that it is actually POSSIBLE to "Moderate" the sugar consumption in the american diet, since you could actually find food that you didnt have to make yourself (from scratch) that does not contain added sugar. This would go a LONG way toward battling american obesity.
As for bacterial flora; Not exactly bacterial, but a common GI yeast (Candida) will make you crave sugar, and will cause lethargy and nausea if you reduce sugar intake. coupled with insulin's effect in this regard, it can make you into a sugar-holic pretty quickly.
Here you go. The official US government recommendation to eat a primarily sugar diet.
http://www.mypyramid.gov/pyramid/index.html
Fiber is basically indigestible matter. While it may fill you up, that is all it does. Most of the need for fiber is to offset a bunch of the negative effects of the currently recommended primarily sugar diet.
OK, I'll take the last word.
High fructose corn syrup is not cane sugar yet it is sugar. Only someone that doesn't understand what sugar is would think that because Brazil produces "Cane Sugar" that they somehow have greater access to sugar than people in the US who live in a country that produces huge amounts of High Fructose Corn Syrup. Also know as sugar.
I get the impression that you use word "sugar" to mean carbohydrates in general, and not just what is usually meant by sugars: sweet mono- and disaccharides. I don't see a lot of those behind that link, it ceratinly is not "primarily sugar diet".
I mean, earlier you talked about food that takes long to digest. Long-chained carbohydrates are just that, their rate of digestion is just about right for the common interval between meals.
Yes, I mean carbohydrates, as they ARE sugars. And, no, they do not digest in just about the right amount of time for meal intervals, unless you are one of the people that are eating 6 meals a day. Pretending that complex sugars are not sugar doesn't make it so, any more than the other poster that was claiming high fructose corn syrup wasn't sugar because it didn't come from cane.
Most of the need for fiber is to offset a bunch of the negative effects of the currently recommended primarily sugar diet.
Nah, fiber is pretty essential to keep our intestines working properly. Evolutionarily we're evolved for high-fiber, low nutrition diets for the most part. Occasionally we catch a mastodon, but mostly we eat roots and leaves. "Eat your veggies".
My God, it's Full of Source!
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Different populations of bacteria can have an effect on our health, good or bad. Ergo, you want to catch the bacteria of healthy people. Ergo one should have sex and "taste/inoculate" oneself with healthy, thin people. Also obesity is similarly contagious so avoid oral/fecal contact with fatties. This is so classic a concept. Its ironic that people 1000 years ago probably believed this, and in fact it may stand up to science.
a collection of cells!
Begs the question of what is 'consciousness' ?