motorgypsy
12-22-2006, 01:54 PM
The HUGE breakthrough relates to the large role bacteria have in our digestion of food. It sounds pretty disgusting for the average person - to discover that the number of calories we obtain from our food depends on the bacteria that live in side us - BUT it appears that calories are NOT the same for all people because all our bacteria are not the same.
The big disovery is that there are two types of bacteria living in humans and one of these is able to extract nutrients from carbohydrates and cause them to be stored as fats. AND people who are obese have HUGE NUMBERS of these particular bacteria. What this means is when a thin person eats an order of french fries perhaps they receive 200 actual calories in nutritions. The obese person may receive 600 calories in nutrition from the same french fries because they have so many more of these bacteria. This is just an example of how this bacteria system works, not actual numbers by the way.
The next interesting thing is when the obese person loses weight the numbers of these nutrient from carbs producing bacteria gets MUCH SMALLER. And the person is able to stay thin on a reasonable diet.
From people who have gone on a reduced carb diet it also sounds as though the body or these bacteria produce something that causes us to crave carbs when we reduce them in our diet.
Right now there is no pill you can take that will reduce the population of these bacteria that cause us to utilize carbs so efficiently BUT just knowing that eating carbs is increasing their population which keeps us fat should very well be enough stimulus for many people to keep their carb intake down very low.
I don't know if keeping carbs low actually kills the bacteria - I suspect it doesn't - but what I think it does based on our studies related to bacteria - is slow the reproductive rate so it is lower than the normal death rate which in turn lowers the overall population.
In a nut shell this means that if you have a weight problem you probably should cut your carbs to about 1/5 of what a normal person eats. This also means what everyone knows - leave off the "white stuff" and stick to things like corn, whole grains, oatmeal, beans, peas, fruits, in very small quantities along with your meat, fish, low carb veggies. Sounds like Atkins was right after all!
So we're more like horses than we ever thought. Bacteria are really instrumental in our food processing. WOW!!!
The big disovery is that there are two types of bacteria living in humans and one of these is able to extract nutrients from carbohydrates and cause them to be stored as fats. AND people who are obese have HUGE NUMBERS of these particular bacteria. What this means is when a thin person eats an order of french fries perhaps they receive 200 actual calories in nutritions. The obese person may receive 600 calories in nutrition from the same french fries because they have so many more of these bacteria. This is just an example of how this bacteria system works, not actual numbers by the way.
The next interesting thing is when the obese person loses weight the numbers of these nutrient from carbs producing bacteria gets MUCH SMALLER. And the person is able to stay thin on a reasonable diet.
From people who have gone on a reduced carb diet it also sounds as though the body or these bacteria produce something that causes us to crave carbs when we reduce them in our diet.
Right now there is no pill you can take that will reduce the population of these bacteria that cause us to utilize carbs so efficiently BUT just knowing that eating carbs is increasing their population which keeps us fat should very well be enough stimulus for many people to keep their carb intake down very low.
I don't know if keeping carbs low actually kills the bacteria - I suspect it doesn't - but what I think it does based on our studies related to bacteria - is slow the reproductive rate so it is lower than the normal death rate which in turn lowers the overall population.
In a nut shell this means that if you have a weight problem you probably should cut your carbs to about 1/5 of what a normal person eats. This also means what everyone knows - leave off the "white stuff" and stick to things like corn, whole grains, oatmeal, beans, peas, fruits, in very small quantities along with your meat, fish, low carb veggies. Sounds like Atkins was right after all!
So we're more like horses than we ever thought. Bacteria are really instrumental in our food processing. WOW!!!