Gut infection: The secret to staying lean

0
624

render05-dig

No more of those dubious infomercials or any of those tireless workouts on your thigh buster! Can you believe that the most illustrious secret that we have all wanted to know for staying lean may rest in the microbes of our gut? Well it has yet to be tested in humans, however, for mice, it is a different story.

In a recent experiment involving inducing mice with gut microbes from thin people, it has been found that these microbes were able to spark the metabolism of the induced mice. Over the years, scientists have discovered that leaner people have different microbes in their intestines than obese people. These studies have conjured up scientists to manufacture the idea of fecal transplants for these particular microbes, in hopes of clearing unpleasant bowel habits and increasing the insulin level for the obese population. However, feces can have another array of unwanted bacteria and microbes for this process.

These miraculous “skinny” microbes are contagious, so you may be asking, why do we not have a skinny epidemic? The answer to that question is the importance of diet. Even in the injected mice, the microbes could not fend off of a consistent diet of fatty foods. Thus, these mice still gained weight from an unhealthy diet. Although the mice gained less weight than the mice injected with the obesity microbes, the solution to being lean still lies within diet.

Having the right type of microbes may not totally transform an organism’s weight, but it is definitely a helping hand to our metabolism. But aside from gut microbe transfusions, the secret to staying lean still remains in the contents of our stomach; we are what we eat.

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/352966/description/A_gut_infection_can_keep_mice_lean