WHAT’S MAKING YOU FAT? COULD IT BE THE BACTERIA THAT MAKE UP YOUR MICROBIOME?
If there is one drum that I continue to beat on my site, it’s the importance of GUT HEALTH and the fact that it’s critical to maintain it by keeping your family off of ANTIBIOTICS. When you foul your MICROBIOME — the normal bacteria that live both in and on your body — you create a situation known as DYSBIOSIS. A quick peek at the scientific literature reveals that dysbiosis frequently results in a LEAKY GUT (and vice versa), which causes a downhill spiral that decimates health in numerous ways.
Case in point, a study from a recent issue of the Journal of Lipid Research (Deposition and Hydrolysis of Serine Dipeptide Lipids of Bacteroidetes Bacteria in Human Arteries: Relationship to Atherosclerosis) showed how an imbalance in Gut Bacteria / Microbiome can lead to heart disease.
It’s been known for a very long time that antibiotics cause OBESITY, although the mechanism was not completely understood (HERE). A team of a dozen scientists, led by researchers from UCONN, showed that dysbiotic bacteria from the oral cavity and Gut secrete large amounts of lipids (fats) that end up in places they shouldn’t — like say the arterial walls. Listen to what Jim Kreiger said in a story for UCONN Today (Bacterial Fats, Not Dietary Ones, May Deserve Blame for Heart Disease).
“Heart disease and fatty clogs in the arteries go hand in hand. But new evidence suggests the fatty molecules might come not only from what you eat, but from the bacteria in your mouth… The research may explain why gum disease is associated with heart trouble. Heart attacks and strokes are the crises we notice, but they result from a slow process of atherosclerosis, the hardening and clogging of the arteries with fatty substances called lipids.
For a very long time, doctors and researchers assumed that the lipids came from eating fatty, cholesterol-rich food. But the research hasn’t borne this out; some people who eat large amounts of the foods we thought were the sources of the fat, such as eggs, butter, fatty fish, and meat, don’t necessarily develop heart disease.”
Did you catch that? Despite the fact that I cannot get this simple fact through the heads of many of my patients who grew up with messages to the contrary drilled into their heads on a regular basis, it’s not dietary fat that causes people to get fat. Although the kind of fats people consume is certainly of critical importance, compared to SUGAR and high glycemic carbohydrates, fat is metabolically inert.
Sugar, however, sets off a metabolic firestorm — an unholy chain reaction that can rapidly ruin your health via INSULIN RESISTANCE, CARDIOMETABOLIC SYNDROME, DIABETES, STROKES and HEART ATTACKS — and that’s just for starters (SUGAR CAUSES CANCER as well). And it’s not because you ate fat, but because under certain conditions, fat is being created by dysbiotic bacteria; the underlying source of a fouled up microbiome..
What have I been telling you for years? It’s antibiotics that initially cause dysbiosis, but sugar and a HIGH CARB LIFESTYLE that propagates it. And all of this is intimately entangled with — you guessed it — INFLAMMATION (a group of immune system chemicals that allows your body to communicate with itself). While a necessary part of the normal healing process, too much inflammation causes some serious problems.
Listen to what World Health dot net said in a recent article called Bacterial Fats May be to Blame for Heart Disease (they bill themselves as “The original voice of the American Academy of Anti-Aging, Preventative, and Regenerative Medicine”).
“Bacteroidetes makes distinctive fats. Non-native Bacteroidetes [Dysbiosis] can be broken down with an enzyme in the body that processes lipids into the material to make inflammation enhancing molecules, making them have a double hit to blood vessels: The immune system views them as a sign of bacterial infection, and then breaks them down with enzymes that super charges inflammation.”
While interesting, those of you in the know cannot be surprised. What’s super cool is that by using a healthy diet as a weapon against inflammation, you have the ability to start turning your health around. Just realize that a healthy diet, while of critical importance, is not the only non-pharmaceutical weapon at your disposal against chronic inflammation, chronic pain, and chronic illness.
If you are interested in the protocol I created to help give suffering people a starting point, make sure to take a look at THIS POST. I’m the first to admit that it’s not the solution for everyone. But it will at least get you thinking with a different mindset, hopefully pointing you in the right direction. And be sure to like, share or follow on FACEBOOK while you are at it.
