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Microbiome Changes Drive the Dieting Yo-Yo Effect, Study Finds (smh.com.au)
wheelbarrio writes: We've known for a long time that diet-induced weight loss is rarely permanent but until now what has been a frustration for dieters has also been largely a mystery to scientists. A paper published today in the prestigious journal Nature presents good evidence that your gut microbiome may be to blame. Studying mice fed cycles of high-fat and normal diets, the authors found that the particular bacterial population that thrives in the high-fat regime persists in the gut even once the mice have returned to normal weight and normal metabolic function after a dieting cycle. This leaves them more susceptible to weight gain than control mice who were never overweight, when both populations are exposed to a cycle of high-fat diet. The details are fascinating, including the suggestion that dietary flavonoid supplementation might mitigate the effect. My guess is that this may end up being one of the most cited papers of the year, if not the decade.
It doesn't matter WHY it affects them differently, except as trivia.
Unless you intend to specifically analyse, combat and treat individual microbiomes in the stomach of every patient, you're not going to be able to do much else.
And, honestly, it STILL comes down to "YOU need to eat less". Short of individually tailored micromanagement of your gut, you're not going to ever really change what's in there.
And yet, eating less will force the gut bacteria that are less efficient to die off and more efficient ones to survive or be introduced. It's horrible, yes, but still the only way to lose weight is to EAT LESS.
The only possible use for such high-tech analysis? People who risk malnutrition through serious stomach disorders that mean it's otherwise impossible to lose weight without dying. And those people are INCREDIBLY rare.
People make excuses as much as they like, blame your parents, your upbringing, your fear of sticky food, your gut bacteria or whatever. If you want to lose weight you have to eat less and exercise more, and there's no way around that that a non-outlier person can achieve.
the authors found that the particular bacterial population that thrives in the high-fat regime persists in the gut even once the mice have returned to normal weight and normal metabolic function after a dieting cycle. This leaves them more susceptible to weight gain
Because this is why people get fat. From eating fat. In other news, eating sugar causes diabetes.
The research is to do with why dieting is rarely successful, not why people get fat.
Essentially: Eat badly, get fat, diet, lose weight, get the munchies all over again because your tummy is still hungry for fat.
So the mice gained weight when they were fed a crap diet. And, quelle surprise, when human porkers give up their short-lived attempts to stick to a Mediterranean diet and shove their noses back in the McDonald's trough, they pile back on the pounds.
Neither article says that the mice had a calorie-controlled diet. It seem far more likely that the gut microbiome changes have an impact on appetite.
You obviously didn't read the article you quoted.
"To test whether it was due to the microbiome, the researchers transferred the altered microbiomes into mice that had not previously been exposed to yo-yo diets - and here too they found unusually rapid and excessive weight gain when the mice were given high-fat foods."
The amount of weight gained on a given diet depended on the gut biome of the mouse more than the calorific content of their diet.
Troll was rated Troll because he trolled (yes, he touched a nerve - but that's part of trolling).
The underlying premise of the article is your gut is an extension of your neural and hormonal systems. Change its ecosystem's chemistry, and you'd think better and eat better. Have more fruit and vegetables, and your health will improve in a non-linear fashion - more than can be explained by better nutrition alone.