Sewage Bacteria Reveal Cities' Obesity Rates 152
benonemusic writes A new frontier in data mining: Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts surveyed bacteria from human waste in the municipal sewage systems. Surprisingly they found different proportions of bacterial species in cities that correlated with obesity rates in those municipal areas. The researchers believe that these bacterial samples can yield city-level information on other diseases as well. Hopefully this isn't just a messy case of spurious correlation.
Gut flora (Score:5, Interesting)
Health problems, including obesity, may be caused by what's in (or missing from) gut bacteria.
Re:Gut flora (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but if you want to know how obese a city is you now have a new choice. A) Analyze at remains from the sewer B) Analyze photos from Facebook or C) Spend 5 minutes at the local Walmart.
Re:Gut flora (Score:5, Insightful)
The news here for me isn't "here's a way to analyse a city's obesity rate", it's just yet another piece of evidence for "obesity is caused primarily by gut fauna". This would seem to add up with the obese population's assertion that losing weight is incredibly hard, while the non-obese population asserts "just eat less, it's trivially easy". The only way these two assertions can add up is if the two populations have some very different environmental factor going on. Gut fauna making obese people absorb much more of the energy from their food would seem to add up as just that kind of environmental factor.
Re:Gut flora (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, but, perhaps what a person eats shapes their gut fuana to best digest their diet. If you spend years eating only twinkies and ho-hos...
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No one fucking spends years eating twinkies and goddamned ho-hos. Every thin person I know eats random fucking bullshit, and every fat person tries every fucking thing on the planet to lose the weight and monitors their intake. Posting as AC was wise in your case- you have jack shit to add except the same random bullshit that idiots have been spewing while a huge percentage of the population spends more time, willpower, and money trying to lose weight than ever before, all while everyone is gaining weigh
Re:Gut flora (Score:4, Insightful)
If you put on weight, you eat more than _your_ body needs. The amount of calories needed depends on your body and your activity level. Someone who runs around all day and takes the stairs and will burn more calories than someone who sits on their butt all day and always uses the elevator.
Don't just monitor your intake, reduce it until you find that point where _your_ body loses weight. That point exists for everyone, go find yours. That might mean you need to eat less than other people if your gut flora is more efficient. If I eat like my body would like me to, I'd be at least 30 pounds heavier. Since I've been there and don't like it, I don't eat that much. In the end It comes down to willpower.
So far all people I have seen trying but unable to lose weight said they don't eat more than others, but if you watch them they do. Here a bit extra, there a larger serving, soda instead of water, a snack during the afternoon... Everytime I ask them to stick to what I eat and match my amount they complain about being hungry and needing something to eat. Well, I feel some hunger to, but I don't act on it. That's where the willpower comes in.
Re:Gut flora (Score:5, Informative)
Cool, I got modded troll for speaking the truth. Hell, in high school, two brothers- the fat one ate almost exactly half of what the thin one ate. In his 20s, the thinner brother finally had to start paying attention to what he ate (not literally "twice what a normal person would think a meal is"), but he's definitely not fat to this day. The fat one did weight watchers and other shenanigans, and still struggles to have a reasonably body to this day. Yes, he was eating "more than he needed", but you fucking know what? He's essentially been hungry his whole life, and the "amount of food his body needs" is QUITE clearly an amount that he ends up in constant hunger over.
That's the important part about all this. Did you know that the blood of two normal weight men, one who lost weight YEARS ago, and one who never had any tendency towards fatness, have vastly different levels of the hormones linked to satiety and hunger?
Yes, of course you can lose weight by eating less than your body needs to maintain its current weight. But that's never NOT been the case, and "starve yourself thin" is not why thin people are thin. They aren't starving. That's the point. There's very clearly triggers. Assclowns can mod me -1 all they like- it's very clearly the truth.
What about the study where they tried to get inmates to gain weight by overeating, and none could? If you think it's as simple as food consumed, you're willfully blind to reality (presumably, a reality which benefits you in some way, or at least you believe that to be the case).
Re:Gut flora (Score:5, Interesting)
This whole business reminds me of the arguments over whether ulcers were caused by stress or bacteria.
Turned out to be that some were caused by the one, and some by the other (about 1/3 of ulcers can be "cured" by taking the appropriate antibiotics).
Maybe, by and by, we'll find that some obesity is caused by the wrong gut bacteria, and some by bad habits.
Disclaimer: I've been moderately overweight. And I've been thin. Never was much trouble going from the one to the other and back.
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Maybe, by and by, we'll find that some obesity is caused by the wrong gut bacteria, and some by bad habits.
Maybe, but i doubt it's as simple as that. I think the dogma that obesity = excess fat is severely confounding our understanding of this issue. One thing i never see discussed anywhere is the contribution to obesity made by fluid retention - which i suspect is considerable.
Everyone seems to assume that excess flesh is fat, but that's not necessarily the case. The body can retain fluid in response to environmental contaminants of various types and most people live in ever more toxic environments. If you seal
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One thing i never see discussed anywhere is the contribution to obesity made by fluid retention - which i suspect is considerable.
I'm somewhat stunned that you don't think the medical community would notice that. Fat is famously less dense than water, so if obesity was caused by water retention rather than excess lipids (within adipocytes and elsewhere) then there would be a noticeable difference in density.
To evaluate it, all you need to do is have people of various sizes jump in a pool and try to float. My guess is that more fat, the more buoyant. You seem to be implying the opposite.
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Some 10 years ago, in response to rising blood sugar levels, I lost almost 60 pounds. Although I have an annual 10 pound cycle, (gain in the winter, lose in the summer)
In all that time, there has not been a single day that wasn't filled with angst about eating too much. Satiety is rare, and must be paid for with future deprivation. Most of my family has no idea, only my wife is really aware of the constant struggle I fight.
I would happily transplant fecal material if it would help with this.
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There are plenty of excuses.
I'm 6'6", had a 6 pack when I was 20, and weighed 100kg, and was pretty fit with a low fat index. I was easy BMI then (100/2^2, 25), but BMI was irrelevant, because I was relatively fit and active. I'm still easy to calculate BMI, but weigh 115kg or so now. 5kg more, and I hit obese.
Now, I would like to lose a little weight, but I put on a bit of muscle in my 20's. I don't think I could ever hit a decent BMI.
I eat/drink probably about 2000kcal/day, but I'm not that active cur
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As for being able to do it. It's a matter of wanting and therefore motivation. That motivation can come from different sources.
That, and exactly what you are being asked to do. If your body absorbs 80% of the glucose in food (thanks to bacteria in your gut that break down starches into glucose), while an average human only consumes 60% (thanks to a lack of those bacteria), you are being asked to eat a significantly smaller amount of food. The result is that even if you have motivation, and more willpower than the other person, you may still not be able to control yourself, as you are being asked to control a greater urge than the
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And here we have it! The first desperate attempt to keep the blame on the obese person! I knew it wouldn't take long.
Haters gotta hate but women and black people are off-limits now, so what're they going to do?
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I'm sure that has some effect, although intuitively it seems likely that unless your diet is _really_ weird (I mean you're actively avoiding some element that some strain of flora needs but you don't), any strain of gut flora is going to be able to find enough food in your food to keep afloat. Oral antibiotics, on the other hand, are at their most concentrated when the intestinal flora encounter them, and given what we've already seen in terms of resistant bacteria in the wild, they could easily weaken one
There is other evidence (Score:5, Interesting)
I read a recent story where someone who had a fecal transplant (which affects gut flora) suddenly had a dramatic weight gain as a result.
It seems like that could work the other way also, as a really quick way to get thinner faster...
Re:There is other evidence (Score:4, Informative)
The opposite has also been observed (http://gizmodo.com/the-secret-to-weight-loss-might-be-poop-transplants-fro-1265888152). As someone who is married to someone who has struggled with her weight for all her life, and has done everything including a strict 1000 calorie diet with very little results, I KNOW there is more to it than "just don't eat as much". The people that don't have the issue or haven't lived with it don't understand the issue, and assume that "it is their fault".
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I wouldn't be surprised if the metabolic wastes of the internal gut flora played a significant role in what nutrients get digested and absorbed and what otherwise would pass through. Perhaps a significant proportion of the nutrients we absorb is not from food, per se, but from the metabolic wastes of gut flora.
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Indeed, it's not beyond reasonable to expect that for example a bacteria that takes fibre and breaks it down into nice short sugars exists. That bacteria, were it to inhabit your gut, would cause you to greatly increase the amount of energy you actually absorb from most foods.
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As someone who is married to someone who has struggled with her weight for all her life, and has done everything including a strict 1000 calorie diet with very little results, I KNOW there is more to it than "just don't eat as much".
Have you considered the possibility that at least some of the excess weight is fluid rather than fat? The body seems to retain fluid in response to conact with environmental contaminants. In my case (and i'm not really fat), i get fluid retention from breathing in the fumes pumped out by computer cooling fans - presumably mainly flame retardants. It has other effects than just fluid retention (cough, headache, etc) and different computers have different effects - presumably because they use different class
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More efficient gut flora is _always_ going to result in weight gain. That's the point of gut flora.
Re: There is other evidence (Score:2)
That person had chronic diarrhea before the transplant. Not surprising that she gained weight when that was solved.
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Well, I'm in the 'just eat less' camp. I acknowledge that it may not be easy for everyone, but I can hit whatever weight target I choose simply by making dietary choices.
Make no mistake, I am not claiming that is is always easy - "what, you say I have to stop drinking?", but it is always doable.
A.
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It is not always doable, at least long term.
Try this: Hold your breath. When you are just about to pass out, take a quick shallow breath. Just enough to not feel like you're passing out. Don't stop, not even for a day, ever. Let us know how that's working out for you next week.
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"Try this: Hold your breath."
What an absurd comparison.
I can reach, and maintain, most any weight goal I choose. I have done this. As I said previously, it is not always *easy*, but it is always doable.
A.
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The point being that "you" doing it may be very different from someone with different gut bacteria doing it. The amount of willpower needed for you to keep your food intake at a suitable level may be fairly high, but still doable. Meanwhile, the level of willpower needed for someone with different gut fauna may be more comparable to sjames' example - beyond that of the typical person.
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" Meanwhile, the level of willpower needed for someone with different gut fauna may be more comparable to sjames' example - beyond that of the typical person."
I grant that it might be possible for the situation you describe to exist, but honestly I believe we have a "culture of failure", e.g. "math is hard", when it comes to personal health.
I read about endless reasons why we will fail to lose weight et al, and I cannot help but consider that we are the victims of our own expectations - we believe it to be
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Honestly, my bet is that you're falling victim to the same thinking that makes people think that depressed people should "just feel happy". That is, if you can't see the issue on the outside, it can't possibly exist, or can't possibly be serious.
Given the mounting evidence that gut fauna is different in obese people, and the very strong correlations between both time periods in which we used antibiotics and obesity, and between geographical areas in which we use antibiotics and obesity, I'd say that this h
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Name any period of time in modern history that any society has found long or even medium term weight loss to be easy.
I'll bet that if you find one, it will have been during a famine.
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"Name any period of time in modern history that any society has found long or even medium term weight loss to be easy."
I at no time said anything was "easy". You're projecting. Again.
A.
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OK, name any time where there was a culture of success around weight loss. That is, where the normal expectation was that the weight would come off and stay off.
Good luck!
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I asked you to try it for a week. You're asking others to try it for the rest of their existence. How long DO you think you could try my suggestion for and how happy do you expect you'll be doing it?
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You asked me to try something incomparable for a week. What you suggest is not remotely similar to the discussion at hand.
Moreover, I'm not asking others to do *anything*. That's a projection on your part.
Last, but not least, comparing caloric intake to oxygen intake is absurd. Stupid. Ridiculous. Dumb. Words fail me.
A.
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I asked you to deny a basic biological drive 'just enough' but not too much. That sure does sound like dieting.
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I'm sorry, but you are trying to claim that the biological need for calories is the same as breathing. I think this is Absurd. Ridiculous. Stupid. Pick your word, I think it's silly.
A.
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So you deny that eating is a basic biological drive? Name anyone who died because they kept forgetting to eat.
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So you deny that eating is a basic biological drive?"
Are you deliberately trying to look ridiculous?
"Name anyone who died because they kept forgetting to eat."
You're demonstrating your own foolishness. Nobody dies because they forget to eat. Forget to breath (silly as that may be) and you're dead. Attempting to equate these two things is just *stupid*.
A.
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Oddly, there have been a very few people who actially could forget to breath and die, but that was the result of an injury.
If anything is stupid, it's expecting someone to be successful at denying a basic drive for the rest of their natural life even while giving in to it just enough to be somewhat functional.
Since you seemed unable to comprehend keeping yourself hungry (and a bit weak) 24/7 even though food is at hand, I suggested a drive you may have experienced.
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But you don't seem to grasp that for many it would have to be a lifelong practice, not just while you drop a few pounds. For some, it has to be to a greater degree, not just "I could eat", or "Gee, must be nearing dinner time", but unable to concentrate on anything else because your abdomen feels like it's caving in.
You seem quite willing to have others live that way, but you object to even a short period of that level of denying a biological drive for yourself.
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"But you don't seem to grasp that for many it would have to be a lifelong practice, not just while you drop a few pounds."
I can't comprehend why you believe this.
"You seem quite willing to have others live that way, but you object to even a short period of that level of denying a biological drive for yourself."
I do not know what delusional affliction you have to think this: reaching and maintaining a target weight for me is an ongoing challenge.
What I deny, categorically, is that this is something outside o
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What you don't get is that you got off easy. Others, not so much. For many, eating normally for a human being is a sure recipe for weight gain.
As soon as they lighten up a bit on the crazy diet they start gaining again. It might take a year to lose but it'll only be a couple months to gain it back.
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It sounds very similar to me. You're suggesting people limit their need for carbon (which their body will burn and form CO2 with), he's suggesting that they limit their need for oxygen (which their body will use to burn carbon and form CO2 with). I'm not sure how much more similar you can get.
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For many, eating normally for a human being is a sure recipe for weight gain.
No, it's not. Really, I don't know how you think this.
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Read the research on gut flora, for example. It's all over google.
OH, and ulcers aren't due to agitation and the Earth isn't flat.
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"What you don't get is that you got off easy."
So you claim.
I suggest that it is just as hard for me to lose weight as it is for you, I simply do not succumb to the 'fail mentality'.
A.
( who is, make no mistake, several pounds over 'target weight' )
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And you present no evidence whatsoever, not even a reference that could be looked up on google.
And you do so as a comment to an article that further strengthens the evidence that it is actually harder for some people than it is for others. What's it like living in the dark ages with the leeches and inquisitors?
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"It sounds very similar to me."
Except in one case you'll die within minutes, and in the other you can survive for weeks*.
Attempting to equate the two does nobody any favors.
A.
* http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi... [bbc.com]
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Except in one case you'll die within minutes, and in the other you can survive for weeks*.
Attempting to equate the two does nobody any favors.
Okay, so there's a difference in scale. That only means that there's a difference in scale of how much you limit it.
That doesn't mean that the concept is fundamentally flawed.
Note - don't actually try the breathing thing, it'll cause you to gain weight (breathing out is the only significant way your body expels mass - all that fat is turned into the carbon in the CO2 you breath out)
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Two happy cookies for you. I can as well and I've gone through the effort and dropped over 100lbs and swore I would keep it off for ever, but the gpp poster is right. It felt like I was holding my breath. People would say you look great, doesn't it feel better? I would reply in a normally pissed off state that it felt fucking hungry. I was not happy though kept it well for nearly 5 years. I have now put most of it back on. My mood is generally
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OK, those are done. What else do I need to do?
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I can reach, and maintain, most any weight goal I choose. I have done this. As I said previously, it is not always *easy*, but it is always doable.
A.
Your medal's in the mail.
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"Your medal's in the mail."
Well aren't you helpful.
Look, if I could go delete the entire sub-thread, I would. It was clearly not useful for anyone, and I try not to get dragged into such things.
I was, at least, sincere.
A.
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Fair enough. It happens sometimes!
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"there are examples of linear partial differential equations whose coefficients have derivatives of all orders (which are nevertheless not analytic) but which have no solutions at all: see Lewy (1957)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
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Analyzing the local Walmart is probably going to demonstrate an example of selection bias.
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Wrong... (and I think you were trying to be amusing but - ) Facebook and Walmart suffer from from the fact that they are not necessarily a representative sample of the population. Everybody takes a dump and the vast majority of them end up in the sewage system. This technique gives you an excellent and easy to obtain* series of sample.
Furthermore, IF this pans out you have a powerful method for screening for the DNA sequences associated with obesity on a population wide basis. And possibly other diseases
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...
Who would have predicted that the road to the good life of a rich, skinny ski resort inhabitant would basically be a shit sandwich?
* as long as somebody else does it.
Heh. Funny, but probably not at all accurate. If it turns out that gut bacteria really do explain a major part of a person's weight, effective treatment is unlike to be as simple as "eat shit". Rather, the specific species responsible for various factors related to weight gain/loss will be identified and cultured. Then various controlled combinations of the effective species will be combined in capsules ("pills") and sold at part of the treatment. These might be expensive, at least at first while the
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Strict dieters and fasters do that less often. So, selection bias there too.
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Health problems, including obesity, may be caused by what's in (or missing from) gut bacteria.
Sorry, no. Obesity is not caused by bacteria (or genetics, or "conditions"). Obesity is caused by consuming more energy than you actually use. Hunger queues may be affected by bacteria, but those are something you can adjust to. The actual weight gain, however, is nothing more complicated than eating more than you need to sustain your body.
Honestly, how a site full of self-professed science geeks keeps ignoring basic thermodynamics continues to blow my mind...
Re:Gut flora (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately the human body is not your average ICE. It doesn't "just" work on basic thermodynamics.
It all starts with the fact that we not only consume "fuel". We actually consume quite a bit of stuff we cannot process. We actually MUST consume that stuff for without we start to get reeeeeally messed up. I dimly remember a NASA experiment where they tried to reduce astronaut food to the nutritious stuff. You know, to eliminate ... erhm ... waste. Guess what: Astronauts still shit. Because it didn't work out. The test people got REALLY sick. Sure, they got all the nutrition they needed, But I guess human can't really work if he doesn't poop.
Which gets to part 2 of the problem: We shit stuff that is still quite nutritious. Ask your local fly population. Our "waste" is not just waste. There's quite a bit of stuff in there that could still be "digested".
In a nutshell, the human body is not the best kind of engine. I'd actually be interested in how good our energy conversion rate is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is really, really shitty, even compared to the engines we build. And I'm not even talking about us using a good deal of the energy we consume just for heating. I'm talking about the energy we consume that goes out right our exhaust without us actually using it sensibly.
And then there's of course the different metabolisms that will have different effects on different foods. Because 1000 KJ from one food source is by no means the same as 1000 KJ from another. And even the same food eaten by two different people will not be metabolized in the same way to the same efficiency.
Sorry, but the law of thermodynamics alone won't cut it.
Re:Gut flora (Score:4, Informative)
TFA says "the microbiome can influence, and be influenced by, a range of characteristics such as weight, disease, diet, exercise, mood and much more." So they acknowledge the causation can go both ways.
But it gets even more interesting. According to a Ted talk [ted.com] I saw about this the other day, there are apparently two different ways that our gut microbes might cause obesity. One is related to what you said:
Which gets to part 2 of the problem: We shit stuff that is still quite nutritious. Ask your local fly population. Our "waste" is not just waste. There's quite a bit of stuff in there that could still be "digested".
From the Ted talk:
When we take the microbes from an obese mouse and transplant them into a genetically normal mouse that's been raised in a bubble with no microbes of its own, it becomes fatter than if it got them from a regular mouse. Why this happens is absolutely amazing, though. Sometimes what's going on is that the microbes are helping them digest food more efficiently from the same diet, so they're taking more energy from their food, but other times, the microbes are actually affecting their behavior. What they're doing is they're eating more than the normal mouse, so they only get fat if we let them eat as much as they want.
So apparently some microbes allow you to extract more energy from your food so you put on more weight for a given amount of calories. But other ones might affect your appetite somehow. There's more in the talk, and it's not just mice: there's research in humans as well.
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And I was trying to tell you that it doesn't work that way. It really does not. The only thing that actually IS correct is that there is an absolute maximum of KJ that you body could technically metabolize: The amount of KJ you stuff in. Of course, since there's no way to create energy.
It's also true that it is likely (note: not certain, just very likely) that if you consume a multiple of what is the normal amount of energy you need, you will end up with that energy being stored. That's likely. But not cert
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And this is about as idiotic as saying, "To get better gas millage just put less gas in your car. You'll burn less gas and so get better gas millage."
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The thing about a statement like this is that, regardless of how correct it may be, it is completely, and flaccidly, useless.
Let's switch the analogy to something like a CPU scheduler.
Say that we have an OS and it habitually lags ass. Tasks quickly begin to accumulate within our OS, CPU utilization drops precipitously, and we eventually hit a deadlock. This is a front and center problem. All of the project's developers have been shuffled into the main hall to address this one issue, because if this doesn't
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Sorry, no. Obesity is not caused by bacteria (or genetics, or "conditions"). Obesity is caused by consuming more energy than you actually use.
Citation? And what part does fluid retention play in this? None, according to your theory. I think you're wrong.
Honestly, how a site full of self-professed science geeks keeps ignoring basic thermodynamics continues to blow my mind...
If you're so smart, explain the thermodynamics of fluid retention.
Of course, if you were really as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't post a/c.
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Health problems, including obesity, may be caused by what's in (or missing from) gut bacteria.
Are health problems caused by the wrong flora? Or does the wrong flora grow as a result of health problems?
Science 101 in any freshman level course emphasis this for good reason.
I tend to think it is the lader as Americans eat more fast food in larger quantities. But of course that is causation too.
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or the kind of gut bacteria you have is caused by certain eating patterns, that also cause obesity
what you call a cause is more likely another effect of a deeper cause
yes, gut flora could be manipulating feedback mechanisms that cause you to eat more, but that's reaching. they effect nutrition only in specific ways
i see this "gut flora may cause obesity" idea as another example of people desperate to point blame elsewhere for their inability to keep their weight down
and i'm not saying it is their fault. for
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because that's your metabolism
not some magic bacteria that instruct your body to store fat
that's what i think
but who cares what i think: have you had your gut flora analyzed? you should
because you are the perfect test case: does gut flora makeup cause weight gain? or does metabolism/ psychology cause gut flora changes and weight gain? your body has the answer. if you have "fat inducing" gut flora, there you go, i'm wrong. if your gut flora is the same as a skinny person, then your metabolism is the culprit
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Bottle sewage, not spring water (Score:2)
I always knew Perrier was missing something.
Can't they just measure sewage volume? (Score:1)
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It's my understanding that obese people eat more and therefore produce more poo. Surely this would be easier.
I wonder if this is true. We seem to be seeing claims that different people eating exactly the same food will sometimes lose or gain weight. Strictly controlled studies seem to be in their infancy, but the implication seems to imply the opposite: Some people's digestive systems (gut bacteria and all) effectively turn more of the input into digested "food", leading to weight gain and decrease in fecal output, while others digest less of the input and produce more output. The former store the excess as f
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Not always. Some obese people eat less (which means less poo), but they process it more efficiently (which means even less poo).
Mercy! (Score:2)
Please, for the love of god, do NOT test Walmart's sewers.
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Judging by how the people in there are, I'd guess testing that stuff could show a lot of drugs nobody even DREAMED could exist.
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I heard that when five WoW's (Women of Walmart) accidentally manage to synchronize their steps, seisometers as far away as Tierra Del Fuego register the disturbance. Also, dogs howl and cows stop giving milk.
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Nigger is a nono. Chick doesn't work anymore either.
But I think we may still slap around the butterballs.
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1. Yes.
2. I know. We call these minor omissions "typos". I tend to make them when I'm in a hurry, because my right index finger contains a transplanted tendon and doesn't work very well.
Related stories (Score:2)
Swapping the bacteria in our mouth may also prevent bacteria by killing off the Streptococcus mutans, perhaps the main contributer of tooth decay.
I really think this relatively new area in science could help if we pursue it carefully.
I'm affraid the data is ... (Score:4, Funny)
... complete crap.
Sorry, had to say it.
Shouldn't be a mystery here. (Score:1)
I always thought. . . (Score:3)
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mhm (Score:5, Funny)
The obivous conclusion (Score:4, Insightful)
If obesity is purely a moral failing, then gut flora must be purely a moral failing too.
I'm convinced (Score:2, Funny)
scientists will get the the bottom of this.
Hopefully this isn't just a messy case of spurious (Score:3)
Hopefully this isn't just a messy case of spurious correlation.
Good work raising doubt on the link between sewage bacteria and obesity only a month after posting a story on bacteria's role in
weight control. [slashdot.org] This one seems somewhat obvious to me.
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Correlation of antibiotic use and obesity (Score:3, Informative)
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So, which bacteria are the good ones? (Score:2)
(a) The linked article doesn't list the good and bad species. Does the original? Is it behind a paywall?
(b) How can I order some probiotic pills with just the right good ones?
(c) Why are probiotic pills so limited in the species included?
Re:So, which bacteria are the good ones? (Score:5, Funny)
The Real Poop (Score:4, Funny)
No shit?
Re: (Score:2)
Bit of a chicken or the egg problem here - how do they differentiate from bad gut flora causing obesity and people who eat way too many carbs have bad gut flora because of it?
Re: (Score:2)
It's not a problem. If they can get rid of the bad gut flora, then they just observe what happens, that's all.
If the person goes back into a state where eating those carbs or volume of food in general does not result in weight gain/maintainance, then the flora were the cause, not the consequence. If the weight stays on / continues to increase, then it wasn't the flora.
The thin