Resetting your gut microbiome with broad spectrum antibiotics

pwrchrd

According to articles like;

https://theguardian.com/science/2016/nov/24/yo-yo-weight-caused-by-gut-bacterias-memory-of-past-obesity-says-study-diet

antibiotics could be useful for resetting the biome and stopping the yoyo effect and post weight gain.

Thoughts?

TavistockToad

or you could make sustainable lifestyle changes and realise that you have to work at being healthy.

it doesn't, for a lot of people, come naturally.

Cylphin60

I tend to go for the simpler explanations. From the article:

Simon Cork, a medical researcher at Imperial College London, said the study was one of the first to show that gut bacteria could actively drive weight gain, rather than simply being associated with it. However, he cautioned that it was unclear whether the findings could be extrapolated to people.

“We do know that this yo-yo effect is caused by quite a few different mechanisms and it’s likely that gut bacteria is only going to play a small role,” he said. “Ultimately, the main reason why people yo-yo is because they don’t stick to the diet.”

My wife's side of the family has...many..overweight members and the prevailing explanation was always that it was genetic and therefore futile to change anything by diet/exercise. So when my wife put on about 60 lbs at one point, the family wisdom pointed towards genetics. Until she lost all the weight, and kept most all of it off.

I am not suggesting that there are no other factors that can complicate obesity and recovery from it, not at all, but it does seem to me that we're in a period where, as a society, we are "overthinking it" and doing our best to find anything that might shift responsibility away from simple decision making and support to factors that give us an excuse.

My sis-in-law also got tired of the weight about a while back, and she is now down to about 170lbs, from about 240. She looks great, and is also keeping the weight off.

I have to stress I do not mean the above to sound harsh at all. I do understand it just is not that simple for some folks even if I don't understand all the reasoning behind that difficulty.

Anyway, my 2 cents...

pwrchrd

Totally agreed that lifestyle is the primary success criteria to maintaining a healthy weight. And agreed that we are always looking for shortcuts, which this could appear to be one, and is most likely one. I am just convinced that there is a symbiotic relationship between this bacteria and our bodies and it effects are rewards/pleasure centers. If I could "reset" the craving for a hamburger or cinnamon roll I would be far more likely to maintain my goal weight. I've tried the occasional reward, within reason approach too, and unfortunately, it's like a little tastes good and a little more tastes better. Lifestyle in a world full of temptation is a difficult path, at least for me.

chocolate_owl

I have a lot of ramblings.

First, to address the title of this debate: the idea of taking a broad-spectrum antibiotic for an extended period of time when it's not absolutely necessary makes me cringe. I'm one of those people who only takes antibiotics when I really, really, really need them so I don't end up with antibiotic resistance.

Next, I do agree that this does seem like we're looking for a shortcut. Could there be some link between gut microbiome and metabolism as speculated? Sure, and initial results here indicate further research is a good idea. Does that change anything about how we should go about tackling obesity right now? Not at all. At the end of the day, maintaining the changes to your eating habits and activity levels are going to be what keeps the weight off.

One thing that kind of interests me is how long it took the mice to shift back to non-obese gut bacteria. I remember the first time I read The Fat Trap (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-fat-trap.html) and being freaked out by it, particularly because of this:

“After you’ve lost weight, your brain has a greater emotional response to food,” Rosenbaum says. “You want it more, but the areas of the brain involved in restraint are less active.” Combine that with a body that is now burning fewer calories than expected, he says, “and you’ve created the perfect storm for weight regain.” How long this state lasts isn’t known, but preliminary research at Columbia suggests that for as many as six years after weight loss, the body continues to defend the old, higher weight by burning off far fewer calories than would be expected. The problem could persist indefinitely.

I know there's been more research done since 2012, and variables like rate of weight loss, muscle mass retention, diet breaks, etc. come into play. But I still find it interesting that the mice took a quarter of their life to "return to normal." Since the actual study is behind a paywall, I wonder how quickly the obese mice dieted down, and I wonder if the results would have been different if their diet period was longer. (Also, they're mice, so the correlations could mean nothing for humans.)

Finally, I'd like to address this:

pwrchrd wrote: »

Totally agreed that lifestyle is the primary success criteria to maintaining a healthy weight. And agreed that we are always looking for shortcuts, which this could appear to be one, and is most likely one. I am just convinced that there is a symbiotic relationship between this bacteria and our bodies and it effects are rewards/pleasure centers. If I could "reset" the craving for a hamburger or cinnamon roll I would be far more likely to maintain my goal weight. I've tried the occasional reward, within reason approach too, and unfortunately, it's like a little tastes good and a little more tastes better. Lifestyle in a world full of temptation is a difficult path, at least for me.

I've related to this feeling, and I think this is more an individual response to cravings rather than a gut bacteria thing. I'm battling ingrained responses (whoops, drank too much last night, hung over, now I want a burger!), completion compulsion (I'm full, but there's still some burger left and we're still sitting here, I'll keep chipping away at it), and frequency of the treat (a burger once every two months is rich and leaves me satisfied before I'm done, a burger every couple of weeks means I'll eat the whole thing). I think before we go about wishing to reset our gut, it's more important to examine our behavior patterns and figure out how to address those.

CSARdiver

My thought is that this is incredibly dangerous and opens up a whole host of medical issues based upon a correlation and not causative factor.

The lengths people will go to prove their state of denial is often astounding.

singingflutelady

Risking making future infections antibiotic resistant is not worth it.