Bacteria Play Key Role in Weight Gain?

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Bacteria Play Key Role in Weight Gain

 

A high-fat, high-sugar diet does more than pump calories into your body.

It also alters the composition of bacteria in your intestines, making it

easier to gain weight and harder to lose it, research in mice suggests.

And

the changeover can happen in as little as 24 hours, according to a

report

Wednesday in the new journal Science Translational Medicine.

 

Many factors play a role in the propensity to gain weight, including

genetics, physical activity and the environment, as well as food

choices. But a growing body of evidence, much of it accumulated by Dr.

Jeffrey I. Gordon of Washington University in St. Louis, shows that

bacteria in the gut also play a key role.

 

Humans need such bacteria to help convert otherwise indigestible foods

into digestible form.

 

Ninety percent of the bacteria fall into two major divisions, or phyla:

the

Firmicutes and the Bacteroidetes. Previous research had shown that obese

mice had higher levels of Firmicutes, and lean ones had more

Bacteroidetes.

 

When the researchers transferred bacteria from obese mice into so-called

gnotobiotic mice, which were raised in a sterile environment and had no

bacteria in their guts, the mice gained more weight than did those

receiving a

similar amount of bacteria from lean mice, even though they were fed the

same diet.

 

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