Microbiome, immune system, and obesity

[ras]

This fascinating article describes the relationship between your immune system and your microbiome and how important this is in terms of what you digest, what you don't, and whether you become obese:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/08/inflammations-immune-system-obesity-microbiome/595384/

 

[Ron Put]

Hm, while the article is restating something which has been known for quite a while, it uses it to absolve the bulkier readers of The Atlantic of personal responsibility and blame it all on "the microbiome." Over the last couple of decades, as obesity has become the norm, mainstream media has been bizarrely focused on "anorexic models" and blaming anything from advertising to big agra and big pharma for the inability of many of their readers to resist that supersized triple burger....

Of course, genetic plays a role. But individual microbiomes change dramatically over one's lifetime based on food and drink choices, exercise, etc.. To paraphrase the old Clinton campaign slogan,, "it's the calories (and to an extent, the type of calories), stupid!"

 

Edited August 6, 2019 by Ron Put

[ras]

I think the "take home" message for the obese is to both right-size calories as well as optimize the microbiome (at least as much as this can be done at this early stage of research into the subject). Here's a short article from Nature Research: