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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.
This might explain why some recipients of FMT for treatment of C. diff. and CU have seen weight gain without changing their diets.
I feel so sig.
You're missing the point. This is about explaining why the same amount of food (or energy) intake affects people differently. Research into metabolic syndrome has shown that there is no simple relation: eat less -> lose weight -> get healthy. Once you know what influences weight gain or loss, given a certain amount of food intake you can adjust for other parameters.
I feel so sig.
So, what you're saying is that if they would just defy an inbuilt biological drive more powerful than reproduction and just below breathing for the rest of their existence without a single slip-up, they'd be fine?
Did you know we actually breath more than necessary? Try this. Inhale slowly and deliberately. But just half as deeply as normal. Now exhale. Continue like that for the next 24 hours. Ideally, you should feel just the slightest bit woozy. I'm going to say the woozy feeling will pass because people who give unsolicited advice like to say things like that, but really, it won't. Be careful not to let your attention wander, you wouldn't want to have a slip-up! People will call you horrible names relentlessly if you slip up!
Now hop to it you worthless slovenly spineless air-hog! My aesthetic sense must be appeased!
All this has very litle to do with willpower; that is the crux of the matter! I was in that situation with sugar some years ago. I got shakes, weakness and irregular hearth beat if I did not eat [plenty of] sugar. I knew it was bad, I knew I was too heavy, I knew it all - and it did not make any difference.
No one can fight their own biochemistry - you only have to pray it does not turn against you. It took me 2-3 years for the gut bugs to balance [more or less] and to [mostly] stop making me crave the carbs....true it was easier and easier with time but it was absolutely herrendous in the beggining. I repeat again with all sicerity - all this has very little to do with willpower.
The fun part is, two identical people, with different gut bacteria - exhibit different willpower.
There is a whole emerging field about how bacteria communicate with the human and modify aspects of biochemistry and perhaps behaviour to favour their propagation.
Most of the this is simple crap is done by fat shamers who want to feel like they are a better person due to the lack of excess fat.
I have lost 50lbs and kept it off for over 3 years myself but it is hard, very hard to do. It was akin to getting my masters degree while working full time hard.
If you eat less you feel more hungry then when you get some food you will over eat.
When you start to exercise you get sore and hungry making you want to just sit and eat.
If you substitute your diet you are often not getting the nutrients you need causing you to feel out of sorts.
It isn't will power to not eat from the candy bowl, but to fight your most primal instinct for a long period. It takes a lot of hard work planning to do it. Any small factor could derail you at any time catching an illness, changing jobs, birth or death in the family.
Diet science has been pathetic because so much of us fall on the simple plan. With Diet food companies sell their plastic food as diet, where they are designed to fit this simple plan and cause us to fail.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"Unless you intend to specifically analyse, combat and treat individual microbiomes in the stomach of every patient"
That's exactly where treatment is heading.
Personalised medicine is a huge emerging field and makes an awful lot of sense once you think about it.
Best comment in the thread.
Even the association between activity and body weight is not conclusive. Are people active because they are slim or slim because they are active? On a population level it is difficult to determine.
This Horizon program from the BBC is excellent viewing for those interested in such things.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01cywtq
On a hunch I decided to see if there's a correlation between obesity and antibiotics (which are known to kill both the good and bad types of gut bacteria)
Here's a map showing antibiotic prescribing rates.
http://www.cdc.gov/getsmart/co...
Here's a map showing obesity rates:
https://www.maxmasnick.com/med...
Correlation is not causation, but in my unprofessional opinion, these maps look eerily similar.
Some people have a more powerful drive to eat than others. Much like traditional pearl divers have a more easily controlled drive to breath (they also tend to die prematurely even if they don't drown).
My suggestion wasn't hold your breath for 24 hours, it was breath less for 24 hours. That's because people who are overweight cannot just fast for the rest of their lives (or they will die young) They have the more difficult task of eating less for the rest of their lives. That is, never again knowing the sensation of satiety. The breathing drive is stronger but I only asked for 24 hours.
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.
Yes, anyone can freely choose to feel tired and hungry all the time or to eat and be overweight but feel fine.
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.
I got shakes
Be careful, they are also full of carbs...
-- Make America hate again!
[citation needed]
"Some people can't exercise because they have a physical health condition that prevents them from doing so."
Odd how it doesn't prevent them heading off to buy a burger or doughnut isn't it?
Are you really that dense? Just because a person's in a wheelchair, you think they can't eat? Just because a person's fat doesn't mean they eat junk food, just as just because a person's skinny doesn't mean they eat a "healthy" diet. What I find really odd is that the level of comments in a science and technology site aren't much better than on YouTube.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Yeah, it is not simple thermodynamics. The complexity of the interactions in the body is overwhelmingly mind-boggling.
Interestingly enough, more and more researchers are buying into the lower-carb side of the diet controversy. And it seems that if you lower the amount of carbohydrates in your diet, you probably have to increase your fat intake to get enough energy to prevent starvation responses. And a gut that is adapted to burning fat for energy is significantly different from a gut that burns sugars. And so on....
However, the report of a single study doesn't provide a prescription for health. Some time ago there was good discussion about creating a comprehensive science database to compare outcomes of different research. This database would report on both successful and unsuccessful experiments and research, which could possibly cut down on instances of "fads" by identifying what works, what doesn't work, and what hasn't been tested yet.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
OK, you have a point so I will tell the secret....the will power came from a source that is unavailable to most cases. You see one of the side effects of my severely misbalanced gut was that enormous amount of particular type of bug had taken over half of the living space. The buggers then found their way into my bladder and from there you know where it goes. So I was suffering from chronic bladder/urethra infection that was unbeatable by any means until it was realized where the source of the problem is.
So, apart from being fat and underpowered I was also having serious trouble with sex [it would simply hurt rather than being a pleasure]. Now for a guy in his late thirties this is one HELL of a motivation! So when the doctor said 'I will make it so that this chronic infection will go away IF YOU EAT what I tell you and you do it seriously" I was like "I'll do anything to be fully functional male again ,anything!".
On the other hand of the spectrum one of my nieces, age 11 who ran into the obesity issue years ago. Being a child she has less of a discipline, willpower and motivation. On top of that in venerable mind as hers [and that of every girl and also boy of this age] the desire to get slimmer turns counterproductive especially if bullying occurs both at school and outside. The girl tries so hard but struggling with the bugs and struggling with society and your own mind proves extremely difficult.
Thus i do not consider my story a showcase for willpower - maybe I don't give myself enough credit but there it is....
I have written many /. posts over the last few years about this. I am still astounished of how much influence those bugs exert on us [although as someone who has studied biochemistry and microbiology, but never made a career in it, I should have known better].
...Personalised medicine is a huge emerging field and makes an awful lot of sense once you think about it.
That depends on if anyone can actually afford it.
Nothing like holding your cure over your head for the right price, which of course will be dictated by millionaires demanding to become billionaires.
The only thing that "makes an awful lot of sense" here is understanding that medicine creates massive profits and isn't getting any cheaper for anyone, no matter who propagates bullshit to the masses to claim otherwise.
This is simply not true. About 20 years ago, I lost the ability to walk. (Also sit, stand, etc.) I gained a lot of weight.
Three years ago, I was put on an exercise regime that made it so that I can walk again. It is very intense - so intense that I get tendonitis of my joints once ever few months (and they don't let me stop exercising then either...).
I have not lost any weight at all. I look better, and obviously feel better, but my mass is more, not less.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
I agree with you entirely, but it's a separate argument. It's similar to reflecting on whether scientists should undertake certain types of research. The media loves to ham these arguments up with a "should we study this?" style of reporting. All along, however, such decisions have always been social/political and are entirely separate to whether we should know something or not.
So yes, we should find out whether personalised medicine works and if so, how much more effective it is. Then, as a society, we should choose whether it is worthwhile or not. As it stands, this process happens all the time in medicine at the moment with all kinds of treatments being unavailable due to economic justification. I'm not arguing for any single one either way, but I do think it is important to do.
Of course, if we're going to go off on a tangent, you may want to reflect on the health care system in the US. The actual system there is the fundamental problem with your poor health care (see infant mortality figures) and exorbitant costs. I'm not saying that anywhere else in the world is perfect, but when you're coming last, it makes sense to at least imitate some things from those in front.
I recommend this movie as a good starting point. Love or hate the guy, in my experience he's certainly worth listening to.
I'm a bit late to the party and please note that this observation is based on a sample size of one, so take that with a spoonful of salt, however:
I've tried a few things to lose weight and I'm now below 90kg. I started at 116kg about 6 or 7 years ago. I first lost 23kg by changing my diet to less carbohydrates and more veggies and salad (where I previously ate none). I was out of a job at that time.
This diet was assisted by a doctor and I was forbidden from doing much sports.
After I got a job and relaxed on my diet regime, I gained another 10kg. I stayed at around 103 kg for quite a bit. Perhaps a year ago, I started chewing my food better and thus ate much less food. I lost weight to the point of weighing about 96kg.
Then came another tough time with the kids and I tried keeping spirits up with carbohydrates, so I remained at 96 for another while.
In last two or three months I went down to 88.8. Again by just eating less.
During the last three years, I had a brutal bout of ulcerative colitis and spent two weeks in the hospital with a blocked colon where I couldn't keep down any food for about ten days.
I weighed about 82 kg when I left the hospital but due to my lack of strength, just about all the weight lost was muscle mass, not fat. I was back on my normal weight a few weeks later.
Now my theory is this: Even though I never wanted to believe it, eating less calories than you actually burn during the day plain does work. There are two caveats though:
Without actually measuring your level of activity and your muscle mass it is a bit hard to define what your daily needs actually are.
And second, and much more important, if you suffer from depression and stress, you are much, much more likely to have to wage a HUGE internal battle with yourself to actually keep to your diet. And when you almost inevitably fail to adhere to your diet on an especially hard day, you're WAY more likely to think yourself a failure and eat too much the next day as well or even give up on the diet altogether.
And since you already failed, in your mind, you'll fall back on the carbohydrates to boost your mental stability again.
I believe, much like with every addiction, that this is primarily a mental issue. Which makes it all the harder to overcome. It's not easy being in a mentally stable state when your overweight contributes to your depression.
No one stops in the middle of a Super-sized triple-decker McShitburger "happy" meal just because they feel full. Not when there's still 2 pounds of french fries left.
Are you spying on me?
Cheap storage VM.
Never trust science reporting. Here's a better source, the summary of the paper that was linked to:
Here, we identify an intestinal microbiome signature that persists after successful dieting of obese mice, which contributes to faster weight regain and metabolic aberrations upon re-exposure to obesity-promoting conditions and transmits the accelerated weight regain phenotype upon inter-animal transfer.
In other words, once a mouse has this microbiome signature they are more susceptible to obesity, i.e. it is harder for people who were once obese to remain at normal weight than for someone who was never obese.
Other studies have shown that once people become obese and start dieting their bodies go into a kind of starvation mode, where they need to keep calorie consumption down below normal levels to maintain their weight. In fact for people who were obese (not just overweight) it can be so bad that the number of calories they need to take in can be below the level at which normal western food can supply enough nutrition.
Of course this can be offset by doing a lot of exercise, but realistically people can't go for a long run every day or spend an hour on the exercise bike, especially as they get older and are probably already dealing with damaged joints from being too heavy.
So if we can find a way to reset that, perhaps by transferring the microbiome from one person to another, we can help people recover and stay at a healthy weight. I imagine it will be more effective than just berating them for being weak minded, at any rate.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yes, anyone can freely choose to feel tired and hungry all the time or to eat and be overweight but feel fine.
As someone who's recently lost some weight, no, that's not right. You shouldn't be going at it so hard that you feel tired all the time. If you do, you're either trying to lose weight too fast, or there's something not optimal about what you're eating.
I found that even before I lost weight, eating high GI foods led to a nice full feeling followd by a carb crash where I'd feel sleepy, which I usually solved by guzzling coffee. Switching to less easily digestible stuff helped a great deal, though I still guzzle coffee, just not quite as much.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Eating less fast food has far more to do with marketing than actually feeling full. No one stops in the middle of a Super-sized triple-decker McShitburger "happy" meal just because they feel full. Not when there's still 2 pounds of french fries left.
I almost never feel full. I don't know if it's my biome, my genome, my upbringing, or what. I always feel like I could eat more. As a teen and 20 something when I could eat unlimited amounts of crap and not gain weight, I would be one of those eating 5 or 6 plates of food from an all you can eat-buffet.
As I hit my 30's I began to gain weight so had to start watching what I eat. I'm always hungry, I always feel like I could eat more, but I limit what I eat to stay healthy. Some of us, myself included, never feel full. It takes a huge amount of willpower for me to not overeat and maintain a healthy weight. I fully sympathise with those who do get huge because they have large appetites. It would certainly be very easy to let go and just pig out rather than be hungry all the time, like I am.
Many people who are overweight aren't so because they continued eating after they felt full, they just don't feel full.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Really? I've heard people who claim we have the best healthcare make claims such as that. I've yet to ever encounter someone who came here for healthcare though. I do know people who have imported things or exported themselves for treatments not offered here or save dramatically on the cost of treatment vs the US though. Including myself, I went to Mexico for dental work at 25% of the cost (which frankly is still an outrageous figure). My dentist tried to discourage me but on my return he reviewed the work and confessed to me that everyone he knows who has gone there for treatment has had excellent work done.
Never trust science reporting. Here's a better source, the summary of the paper that was linked to:
In other words, once a mouse has this microbiome signature they are more susceptible to obesity, i.e. it is harder for people who were once obese to remain at normal weight than for someone who was never obese.
We've been edging toward this knowledge more and more recently. The bacterial content of our guts has fascinated people for a long time. Its even used as treatments, as in fecal matter transplants for C. difficile colitis http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org...
Even as far back as the 1940's Theodor Morell, Old Adolph's physician treated him with intestinal bacteria. And despite everyone thinking it was quackery of the highest order, it appeared to work.
Other studies have shown that once people become obese and start dieting their bodies go into a kind of starvation mode, where they need to keep calorie consumption down below normal levels to maintain their weight. In fact for people who were obese (not just overweight) it can be so bad that the number of calories they need to take in can be below the level at which normal western food can supply enough nutrition.
At my adult lightest, I bicycled 20 miles a day, ran 2 miles a day at lunch time, lifted weights before the bicycle trip home, and ate 1 meal which was estimated around 700 calories. And while I was pretty ripped, there was no way I could keep that up, especially after my son was born and the missus wanted me at the house. So the exercise just became the lunchtime work.
With a surprising amount of weight gain.
So if we can find a way to reset that, perhaps by transferring the microbiome from one person to another, we can help people recover and stay at a healthy weight. I imagine it will be more effective than just berating them for being weak minded, at any rate.
A person can diet and lose weight. It can be difficult, but can be done.
A person who feels the need to act all superior because of weight cannot help but be a gaping asshole - a condition for which there is no cure.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It's really a very exciting field, lots of potential applications. All frustratingly far off though, for people suffering today. I can see clinics in China and eastern Europe offering this treatment for all sorts of things soon, maybe even pharmacies offering pills online. I suppose the main issue is that the transplant material needs to be somewhat "fresh".
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It doesn't matter WHY it affects them differently, except as trivia.
Personally, I think an interesting research project might be why self sanctimonious assholes feel that weight is a measurable attribute signifying superiority, and as such ridicule of the obese is only right - when in fact it's a manifestation of insecurity.
Your simple Just eat less and exercise more is a truism, and like all truisms is worthless.
I kept my weight in line with a hellava lot of exercise and eating 1 meal a day. Running, weights, bikes, and Ice Hockey. But it took a hellava lot of each. And much more effort than most people would ever make - including th esuperior people who were slender to start with. I'm pretty efficient in my food processing. Put in a starvation situation, I'll be healthy when the naturally slender people are dead. But as it is, I spend a lot of time exercising a lot of will power. How much? In high school and a few years afterward, I smoked cigarettes. I was up to 4 packs a day. Quitting that was much easier than the daily willpower I need to ignore hunger. You can live without cigarettes, but try going cold turkey on food.
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.
In this matter you are wrong. We already do fecal matter transplants in order to treat C. difficile colitis. There are also an interestingly high number of probiotics available for consumption. And then there is that interesting intestinal biota difference between obese and normal people. The fecal transplants for the colitis issue shows how a change in flora can have positive results. So this matter is valid.
What I find odd in this matter is how some people seem to have a need to castigate those who are not slender, have a deep seated need to call the obese out for their failings - the lack of will power, the weakness inherent in anyone not properly slender, and therefore not equal to the properly slender.
Then couple that with a desire that this intestinal flora thing be bogus, a reaction that seems to indicate a need to ridicule the obese. Perhaps it's time to ridicule people with bad insecurity issues?
Do you want this to not work? What if it does? Will the sanctimonious need to find a new target to deride?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Most of the this is simple crap is done by fat shamers who want to feel like they are a better person due to the lack of excess fat.
Exactly. Remember though, we can lose weight, but they cannot lose being assholes because it is a terminal condition.
I have lost 50lbs and kept it off for over 3 years myself but it is hard, very hard to do. It was akin to getting my masters degree while working full time hard.
I hear ya brother! Congrats. But it is hard to keep it off, and you find yourself spending a lot more time exercising and avoiding food than the "superior" people. I've been exactly there.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
>"I go from full to famished in about an hour. "\n Thank you for not leading into a tired joke about Chinese pussy.
Paleo is the vegan to low-carb's vegetarian. You don't have to go full on paleo to take advantage of a low-carb diet.
You're missing the point. This is about explaining why the same amount of food (or energy) intake affects people differently
Absolute nonsense. From the Sunday Morning Herald summary (I don't have a Nature subscription):
From the abstract: "Here, we identify an intestinal microbiome signature that persists after successful dieting of obese mice, which contributes to faster weight regain and metabolic aberrations upon re-exposure to obesity-promoting conditions and transmits the accelerated weight regain phenotype upon inter-animal transfer."
So no, not nonsense at all, you did miss the point, and your 'common sense' hypothesis that "the gut microbiome changes have an impact on appetite" is at best a guess and at worst a post facto rationalisation because you didn't like the conclusion the authors drew. You think they went to all the effort to perform the experiments, wrote a paper on it, but somehow didn't think to control for calorific intake? Really?
This explains it, with a link to the study:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016...
Basically resting calorie consumption goes way down. One guy was 700 kcal/day below his previous level, making it actually impossible to diet at a safe level to just maintain his weight.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yeah, it is not simple thermodynamics. The complexity of the interactions in the body is overwhelmingly mind-boggling.
Interestingly enough, more and more researchers are buying into the lower-carb side of the diet controversy. And it seems that if you lower the amount of carbohydrates in your diet, you probably have to increase your fat intake to get enough energy to prevent starvation responses. And a gut that is adapted to burning fat for energy is significantly different from a gut that burns sugars. And so on....
However, the report of a single study doesn't provide a prescription for health. Some time ago there was good discussion about creating a comprehensive science database to compare outcomes of different research. This database would report on both successful and unsuccessful experiments and research, which could possibly cut down on instances of "fads" by identifying what works, what doesn't work, and what hasn't been tested yet.
Recent research into gut biology certainly is fascinating and exciting. It seems clear that different types of guy bacteria break down food at different rates and into different components. A lot of research has gone into fecal transplants, but that is the "cheap and roundabout way" of researching this issue, in my opinion. Some questions I have are-
1. Do different species of gut bacteria break down different types of food (vegatables, fruits, proteins, etc) differently?
2. Where are the 'ideal' (most healthy) bacteria commonly found? Are they a byproduct of food decomposition? There does seem to be some benefits of consuming fermented foods. It wouldn't be too surprising to find that bacteria good at decomposing food on the countertop are also good at decomposing food in the gut (as long as they can handle the acidity). This could imply that the super clean food practices commonly used in western countries (refrigeration, washing, etc) could actually be harmful since they restrict bacteria from proliferating.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I find myself in the strange position was wanting to eat shit.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC