Would like to share my research with you...

So a lot of you who have been here a while know me. For those who don't, I'm a 2.5 year PhD student studying the gut microbiome, obesity, and skeletal muscle. I would like to share what I've uncovered so far because I think it's cool, and also because it gets lonely having no one to talk to that knows about my stuff. :sad:

After I post this I'll be gone for about 3 hours, so I hope the thread doesn't die. :laugh: Anyway, here it goes:

Your intestines are packed with multiple trillions of bacteria. Every person has a different profile of bacteria, just like a finger print. When you were born, you had none, but as you were exposed to bacteria during birth and for the 2 years following, your gut became 'colonized'. These bacteria are your 'gut microbiome'.

Everyone has a mix of healthy and harmful bacteria. Healthy bacteria keep your intestines covered in mucous, they digest fiber to make gas and some fatty acids for your intestinal cells to 'eat', and they kill harmful bacteria. Harmful bacteria are covered with something called lipopolysaccharide (LPS) which causes a type of inflammation in your body. This isn't like a bruise or an illness; it's almost undetectable, but it causes things like insulin resistance. It might also cause obesity and type 2 diabetes in the long run. When the harmful bacteria die, the LPS comes off of them and floats around in your intestine.

The LPS can bind to fat that you eat and be carried into circulation. This isn't that bad, though, because it ends up being deactivated in your liver. When LPS leaks between your intestinal cells, that's a problem. Your intestine can become 'leaky' if you are obese and/or diabetic. It can also be leaky if you happened to be 'colonized' with bad bacteria. If you have a very leaky gut, more LPS escapes and causes problems.

A big problem with LPS is that it can mess up your skeletal muscle metabolism. Skeletal muscle--the kind that moves your body--is the largest metabolically active organ in your body. LPS can make your muscle unable to use fat for energy. Instead it can only use glucose. The fats are deposited around the muscle cells which eventually causes the muscle to become insulin resistant as well. This means you have a lot of insulin, glucose, and fat in your blood stream, which leads to obesity.

I am looking at ways to make more healthy bacteria grow. You can do this by eating a high-fiber diet, flax seeds, preobiotics (like inulin fiber), and taking probiotics in very high doses (in the billions of cells per day). Avoiding a high-fat, high-sugar diet is a way to prevent harmful bacteria from growing.

I hope you guys found this a little bit interesting at least. There is much more to the picture but this is the main part. I could go into all the hormones and everything but that would take forever! Just wanted to let you know that obesity is more than what you eat. It's what's inside you, eating!