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“Keep the faith, don't lose your perseverance and always trust your gut extinct.”~ Paula Abdul
Have you ever wondered why the person sitting next to you with a pile of food that could feed a third world village for months seems incredibly fit and trim; while you seem to gain weight by simply reading the menu?
Or perhaps you’ve been exasperated after half an hour on the treadmill realizing that your effort has yielded the caloric equivalent of consuming fourteen walnuts; while the teenagers down the street ready their six-pack beach bods by consuming bags of chips and actual six-packs.
Perhaps the reason has more to do with why only one of two people who live in the same house, who go to the same places, and congregate with the same people gets the flu. What are those individual variables that allow some to thrive in the same environment where others succumb to disability and disease?
Is it all simply a matter of predetermination that the Moirai, The Fates, have woven into the strands of our DNA? Is God’s plan preordained in a decree written out in the A, T, C, and G of our own unique nucleotide sequence? Where, if at all, can we exercise free will of heart and mind?
It turns out, that the way to both may be as that old adage advised, through the stomach. And that, it turns out, may also be where our free will resides.
Current statistics reveal a pandemic of overweight and obese as defined by the body mass index (BMI), with nearly two thirds of the country falling into either of those categories. And while certainly not the best measure by any criteria, a rise in the BMI of the general population does reflect a rise in measures like waist circumference and other indicators of visceral adipose tissue (VAT). These correlate not only with centripetal obesity, the now nearly ubiquitous “belly fat” seen in the US population, but with an increase in markers of inflammation. This in turn parallels the rise in the incidence and prevalence of the many disabilities and diseases associated with the modern Western diet like cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
To understand how this may be possible, we need to examine some of the latest research linking what we choose to eat to what we become; it is a tale of mice and men. Mice can become obese through genetic manipulation. These genetically obese mice have a mutation in their leptin gene. Mice can also become obese by feeding them the murine equivalent of the modern Western diet. By either pathway you take, you arrive at the same summit. Both groups of obese mice develop abnormalities in their gut microbiome; with similar abnormalities seen in the gut microbiome of obese humans.
There are certain types of mice called germ-free mice (GF) that as the name implies are sterile; they have no bacteria in their gut, they have no gut microbiome. While they may consume more calories per day than their obese brethren, they remain lean. These findings support the experimental evidence that our gut microbiome contributes substantially to our daily energy production (and yet another reason why assessing food through simple caloric value is flawed). Because their gastrointestinal tract is a blank canvas, GF mice are the perfect vehicles to foretell the future through feces.
Following a poop transplant from normal mice, GF mice obtain a normal weight. Following a poop transplant from obese mice, GF mice become obese. All this occurs at the same caloric consumption per day; revealing yet another Fallacy of The Calorie. But we know from other scientific studies that genetics does play a role in the composition of the individual gut microbiome. It also appears that during the perinatal and newborn periods the development of the gut microbiome is extremely malleable. It can be significantly affected by variables like maternal health, cesarean versus vaginal delivery, and breast-feeding versus synthetic formula.
With so much out of our control, where, if at all, do we have our voice?
The epiphany to this conundrum is revealed in a very simple answer; twins. Human monozygotic twins are nearly genetically identical. Additionally, they often share the same perinatal, delivery, and newborn experience which helps to minimize those variables. A landmark study was started by collecting the poo from pairs of such twins in which one was lean and one was obese.
The gut microbiomes of mice and humans share a great degree of homology, over 80% of both mouse and human microbiotas are dominated by two phyla; Firmicutes and the Bacteroides. Thus the GF mice could undergo a fecal transplant from the human twins. Consuming exactly the same diet in terms of caloric value, quantity and quality; there was a striking difference in outcomes. The GF mice that received lean twin poop remain lean. The GF mice who received obese twin poop became obese.
But mice have another characteristic which makes them an excellent experimental model and a horrible dinner party guest. They like to eat each other’s poop. By putting both the obese and lean GF mice in the same cage they all develop a similar gut microbiome. The result of this arrangement was that all the mice became lean.
Such elegant experimentation implies that obesity and inflammation, precursors to the disabilities and diseases associated with the modern Western diet like diabetes and cardiovascular disease, are in fact transmissible from one individual to another.
The World Health Organization defines infectious disease as follows:
Infectious diseases are caused by pathogenic microorganisms, such as bacteria, viruses, parasites or fungi; the diseases can be spread, directly or indirectly, from one person to another.
If we expand our concept of pathogenic microorganisms to include an abnormal, altered and dysfunctional gut microbiome we can see that a condition such as obesity with associated inflammation (the centripetal variety) begins to fulfill the criteria for an infectious etiology.
But the “where”, “how”, and “if” of such an infection is the nexus of free will. Assuming that most people do not take the expression to “eat shite” literally; fecal transmission is not a likely leading cause of obesity. But what goes in the other end is the cause. And that decision of consumption is ours to make; it is our expression of free will. The devil waits at the crossroads of meal and mouth.
The gut microbiome is significantly affected and altered – in some studies in as little as a day – by what we choose to consume. And the bacteria do not care about the calories. They care about the quality. Eating the modern Western diet with its adulterated foodstuffs and pre-processed, prepackaged, preprepared and preserved comestibles is like carpet bombing your gut microbiome. When you deploy these intestinal IED’s of inflammation you turn your American heartland into a scene out of Falluja.
Many of the constituents and additives like zero calorie artificial sweeteners, carboxymethylcellulose, and polysorbate 80 are among many others that have been accepted as having no direct effect on the human cells of the gastrointestinal tract. However, they have recently been shown to be potentially detrimental to the gut microbiome.
This symbiotic organ is now acknowledged to have a role not only in local disease processes like inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), but in distant and systemic pathologies. These range from cancer, cardiovascular disease, and autoimmune diseases to diabetes, and behavioral and psychiatric disturbances.
So forget the celebrity hype for quick fixes and miracle cures. Put your faith in real, wholesome foods, don’t lose your authenticity and keep your gut microbiome extant; lest you find it extinct.
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