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Stories filed under: "flora"
DailyDirt: Big Bones Are A Myth, But Obesity Has Legit Causes
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Some people are naturally skinny and able to eat almost anything they want without gaining weight. Obviously, there are also plenty of folks who need to watch their diets very carefully and exercise regularly to prevent unhealthy weight gain. The causes for obesity are not well understood, and while many observers like to say it’s obvious that people need to expend more calories than they consume, the challenge of doing so isn’t as simple as it sounds for many. There aren’t any miracle diets or drugs, but as we study obesity and understand it more, there could be more palatable treatments someday.
- Mitochondrial genetics could explain metabolic changes with age and with different environmental conditions. Large scale studies of mitochondrial changes in city populations are just beginning, and researchers will try to make sense of how cell genetics influence health. [url]
- A rare chromosomal abnormality can cause Prader-?Willi syndrome — a condition that can be fatal and cruel because its victims can literally eat to death. People with this condition have no sensation of satiety, so they can eat until their stomachs rupture. [url]
- There’s evidence to support the idea that intestinal microbes correlate with obesity. A fecal transplant from an overweight daughter to a mother suffering from an intestinal infection resulted in the infection going away — but also a weight gain problem for the mother that previously didn’t exist. [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: diet, fecal transplant, flora, genetics, gut, health, microbes, mitochondria, obesity, overweight, prader-willi syndrome, satiety, weight
DailyDirt: Creative Ways To Eat Less
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
A pretty concerning statistic for Americans is that 17% of kids in the US are obese. The solutions to reduce that figure range from getting kids to eat better school lunches to eliminating various kinds of advertising aimed at getting kids to equate food with fun. There are a few other crazy ideas to keep people from getting fat, without trying to eat less or exercise more. Here are just a sampling of such suggestions.
- There’s a chance that the bacteria in our intestines have some influence on obesity. From a preliminary study, morbidly obese people were found to have different bacterial communities in their intestines, but it’s not clear if the different flora are a cause (or a result) of obesity. If there is a causal relationship, maybe there will be an effective treatment that involves cultivating different intestinal microbes. [url]
- “The Parasite Diet” isn’t a new idea. At the turn of the 20th century, some people used tapeworms to lose weight (before modern medicine convinced people this was a very bad idea). But genetically modified tapeworms that are benign to people could be a reality someday. [url]
- Freakonomics has yet another podcast on obesity called “100 Ways to Fight Obesity” that covers some interesting proposals to prevent overweight adults and children. Some suggestions, such as smelling a vial of vomit to curb an appetite, are not so pleasant — and not really guaranteed to work that well, either. [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: bacteria, diets, eating, flora, food, obesity, tapeworm
DailyDirt: Fighting Biology With Biology
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
While most people have been taught to fear and loathe bacteria and other microscopic organisms (just watch some soap commercials), healthy people actually carry around more bacterial cells with them than their own human cells. It’s estimated that there are ten times as many bacterial cells on a typical person than the number of cells that carry a person’s own genetic code. About 100 trillion microscopic life forms usually live peacefully on (or in) our bodies, but the microbes that cause disease make us suspicious of all of them. In our battle to defeat the bad guys, though, we should be careful to limit the collateral damage. Here are just a few projects working on fighting “bad” bacteria without killing them all.
- Acne plagues millions of people, and its treatments aren’t always effective — so how about some anti-acne viruses to kill off the bacteria that cause these pimples? The key trick is killing off just those specific bacteria and not all the beneficial natural bacteria that live on everyone’s skin. [url]
- A rare medical procedure, bacteriotherapy or fecal transplantation, attempts to restore a person’s natural intestinal flora. Antibiotics can sometimes kill off too many microbes, making people sicker, and sometimes the solution is to re-create the right balance of microbes in a patient. [url]
- Synthetic biology could create bacteria that prevent cavities, solve lactose intolerance, provide vitamins, and do all sorts of beneficial things for us. Imagine eating a yogurt that would replace the bacteria in your mouth or digestive tract… (and then wait 28 days for the zombie apocalypse). [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.
Filed Under: acne, bacteria, bacteriotherapy, biology, biotech, flora, microbes, synthetic biology