Can bad genes and bacteria stop your fat loss?....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 3-9-2010

There’s two stories that were online late last week.

In the first one, several news companies had the story that a company can test you to see if you will lose fat best by cutting carbs or by cutting fat or you need to do both --and may have a test that can show if exercise will help you some or a quite a bit in losing the fat you want to lose.

The second story has information suggesting that the bacteria in your intestinal tract can make you fat if they are the wrong ones.

For those that would like extra info, how get the $149 gene test, for example, I’ll include that after my part of this post.

But you can use the information now without getting any further diagnosis.

My part of the post is why that’s so and how to lose your fat regardless of these background factors.

Here’s the short version first.

There are some kinds of fats and oils that tend to cause disease or simply DO cause disease. If you want to lose fat, your intake of these should be as close to zero as you can make it! Your health will be dramatically better and you will be less fat. If you lose fat best from cutting carbs, you may only lose 5 to 15 pounds by eliminating these bad fats while someone who loses fat best by cutting fat may lose three times that. But, bottom line, it makes NO difference. If you eliminate these bad fats and are moderate rather than excessive in your intake of the good fats and oils, you will be less fat.

Similarly, there are some kinds of carbs that help people lose fat and so anyone wanting to be less fat should be SURE to eat more of them! And, there are some kinds of carbs that cause EVERYONE who ingests them to be far fatter than they should be or likely would like to be.

Same deal. Everyone, repeat everyone, who eats more of the good carbs and as close to zero of the bad carbs as they can manage, will be less fat, and in some cases dramatically less fat, than they were. Yes, the people who find cutting these bad carbs is most helpful will lose more; but the people who cut them who are less sensitive will also be far healthier and less fat, it will just do a bit less for them. Even better, the effects of eating the GOOD carbs will be just about identical for both groups.

Lastly, they may one day have a special treatment for people who have too many of the bacteria that tend to make and keep people fat. But there’s no need at all to wait for it.

Separate research has found that losing the bad fats and bad carbs and increasing the vegetables – particularly eating organic vegetables raw— which are the good carbs, the good bacteria increase and the bad bacteria will decrease. Similarly, people who eat (or drink) lots of the bad carbs and fats, will have their bad bacteria go up and their good bacteria go down.

In addition, if you take a probiotic supplement, you get three benefits.: You’ll be far less likely to get diarrhea from bacteria that otherwise would have caused it. The daily tune up this gives your immune system will help you have less colds and cases of the flu.

AND, the probiotic bacteria will gradually crowd out the kinds of bacteria that tend to make you fat. Simple. The good guys get daily reinforcements. The bad guys don’t!

As you can see, none of that need cause you to wait or guess. Regardless of these factors – your genes and the bacteria in your gut now, if you know how to eat right and do it, know how to exercise safely in a way that you find sustainable and do it, & you take probiotics, you WILL be far less fat and dramatically healthier.

Here are some repeats from yesterday’s post on what carbs and fats NOT to eat. Why eat or waste your safe caloric intake on calories that make you fat and sick. Eliminate to slash these to near zero.:

“Never, ever voluntarily eat ANY shortening, regular margarine, or any hydrogenated oils – or any product that has more than zero transfats listed on its label.

The stuff is quite literally heart attack starter. It directly causes your small particle LDL to go up. The research that showed that has been done. But far too many foods still contain it.”

“NOT eating foods made from refined grains, NOT drinking soft drinks, and eating foods with sugar only a few times a week or less tends to have a triple benefit. Your HDL will go up; you’ll either avoid gaining excess fat or lose a good bit if you were ingesting this stuff several times a day; you’ll be dramatically less likely to get or keep high blood sugar, insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes; AND your CRP inflammation will go down. EACH of these things is heart protective. (White potatoes and French fries and chips made from them have similar effects.)

Note the extra emphasis on this one! In addition, many of the packaged snacks and desserts containing this stuff also have excessive amounts of salt and some still have hydrogenated oils and transfats.”

Not eating or drinking these things also lowers triglycerides which is heart protective.

These bad carbs either fail to make you less hungry when you ingest them or cause rebound hunger within an hour or two after you eat them or even do both! Guess what that does to your fat loss program!

“Eat berries or other fresh fruit, nuts, or even some dark chocolate instead of this list of bad actors -- and your overall health and heart health AND your lipid blood indicators will be dramatically better. Your doctor may even ask you what you did, they’ll improve so much.”

Also, if you have some treats that you really like on occasion and that contain these things, just eat them once or twice a month instead of 3 or 4 times a day! As the author of the book on the subject explains, French women still eat wonderful treats while NOT getting fat. And that’s one of the key reasons why!

The good carbs are those in green and nonstarchy vegetables and low glycemic fruit such as whole apples -- and to a slightly less extent those in beans and lentils, other fresh fruit, and in nuts. If you eat a lot of these and go heavy on the green and nonstarchy vegetables both raw and cooked, you will find you can eat a LOT of them and not be hungry for as much of everything else. It’s a virtually automatic -- no extra will power needed -- way to eat less of the foods that have more calories.

Weight Watchers assigns green and nonstarchy vegetables ZERO points.

Eating more green and nonstarchy vegetables makes you more able to cut back on the bad carbs and bad fats and even to avoid eating excessive amounts of the good kinds such as the fats and oils in wild caught fish, nuts, avocados, extra virgin olive oil, and omega 3 supplements that are the health supporting choices.

All these methods work regardless of your current gut bacteria and which genes you have.

That said, if you would do better if you knew what worked best for your genetic type and you have the $149 it costs, here’s that info

Here’s some of the AP story and the link I found separately to buy the test.

“Gene test claims to show what diet works best

By Marilynn Marchione, AP Medical Writer Thursday, March 4, 2010

Diet not working? Blame your genes. That's the pitch behind a new test that claims to show whether people will do better on a low-fat or a low-carb weight loss plan.”

“ "We were able to explain why some people were successful" and others were not, even though they ate the same way, said Mindy Dopler Nelson, a nutritional biologist at Stanford University who led the study but has no financial ties to the maker of the test.

The company, Waltham, Mass.-based Interleukin Genetics Inc., looked at studies on hundreds of genes and chose three genes that show a pattern for metabolizing fats and carbohydrates, said its chief scientific officer, Ken Korman.

The company then hired Stanford researchers to do a validation study of its $149 test, using people who took part in diet research that was published in 2007. That study tested four diets — Atkins (ultra-low-carb), the Zone (low-carb), Ornish (very low-fat) or a low-fat diet following the federal Food Pyramid.”

About one-third of the original participants, 138 women, sent cheek swabs with their DNA to Interleukin, which tagged them as "low-carb appropriate" or "low-fat appropriate."

Looking back at the original study's results, researchers saw that women whose diets matched their genetic makeup lost more than 13 pounds over a year compared to less than 3 pounds for women on mismatched diets, Nelson reported at a heart association conference this week.”

Reuters had this:

“Your best diet? It might be in your genes

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor Thurs, 3-4-2010 WASHINGTON (Reuters) (Editing by Xavier Briand and Todd Eastham)

Can't lose weight on a low-fat diet? Maybe you need to cut carbs instead, and a new genetic test may point the way, maker Interleukin Genetics Inc reported on Wednesday.

The small study of about 140 overweight or obese women showed that those on diets "appropriate" for their genetic makeup lost more weight than those on less appropriate diets, researchers told an American Heart Association meeting.”

“Massachusetts-based Interleukin's $149 test looks for mutations in three genes, known as FABP2, PPARG and ADRB2. “

>>> (Interleukin Genetics Inc http://www.inherenthealth.com/our-tests/weight-management.aspx is their sales site.)

My own take is to simply assume you need to do both cutting bad carbs and cutting bad fats well and do it, I guarantee you that will give you the best results even if you are one of the two other groups.

That story also had this line.: “ It also can test who might best lose weight in response to exercise.”

It is known that some people do better with exercise than others for losing fat. But the other health benefits of exercise are so powerful and its help in ensuring your weight loss is fat only, and in NOT gaining the fat back that you lost. EVERYONE should do exercise who wants to lose fat and keep it off.

The study I would like to see done would show how people who tend to respond less to exercise can improve their response and results.

The best story on the bacteria was this one in TIME online. (As you’ve seen, there is evidence you can protect yourself from the bacteria described in it by eating right and taking probiotics since those things tend to decrease the amount of the bad bacteria described in the article.)

“Obesity: How Intestinal Bacteria May Cause Weight Gain

TIME By Alice Park Friday, March 5, 2010

If you're fighting the battle of the bulge, most of your attention - and frustration - is probably aimed at your midsection. It makes sense, since that's where the extra pounds tend to gravitate, especially with the creep of middle age, piling on to form that dreaded spare tire. (See 10 myths about dieting.)
But a growing body of research suggests there's another, less visible reason to focus on your gut if you want to lose weight. Scientists led by Andrew Gewirtz at Emory University reveal that your intestines harbor a universe of bacteria - the so-called gut microbiota - that may play an important role in whether your body will store the food you eat as extra pounds.

Gewirtz's team, including researchers at Emory, Cornell University and the University of Colorado at Boulder, became intrigued by the relationship between gut bugs and weight when they noticed that lab mice lacking a certain protein had more of the bugs than other animals and were about 15% heavier. These mice also had a higher level of inflammation, which the authors explain in their paper published online Thursday in Science Express is what may account for the extra weight. Inflammatory signaling can promote a condition called metabolic syndrome, which causes weight gain, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels and a higher risk for developing diabetes and heart disease.

The fatter mice in Gewirtz's study had been bred to lack a protein known as toll-like receptor 5 (TLR5), which most intestinal cells sprout on their surface. Its job is to recognize and bind to the whiplike flagella that bacteria use to move around. TLR5 acts as a traffic cop for controlling the mass of pathogens living in the intestine; without it, the normally harmless gut bacteria tend to overflourish and expand in number. (See and listen to an audio slideshow about obesity rehab.)

When that happens, the study found, it triggers an inflammatory state, as the body attempts to respond to the increasing population of bugs, and at the same time makes cells less sensitive to insulin. In a way, inflammatory factors and insulin compete for the attention of the same intestinal cells; if the cells are busy responding to inflammatory factors, then they are less likely to take up glucose and process it effectively. Such a desensitization to insulin and glucose then leads to the symptoms of metabolic syndrome, such as weight gain, high cholesterol and triglyceride levels and elevated blood pressure - which were all present in the TLR5-deficient mice.

"We don't think the bacteria are directly making the mice eat more, but the bacteria are causing low-grade inflammation, which causes insulin resistance and then makes the mice eat more," says Gewirtz.

To test that theory, the researchers conducted a series of experiments, the most illuminating of which revealed that when the TLR5-deficient mice were given unrestricted diets, they ate 10% more than normal mice, and that even when their food was limited, they were still less sensitive to insulin than their normal counterparts.
The finding was confirmed when the team transferred the bacterial gut population from TLR5-deficient mice into animals that were specially bred to have no immune system, making them incapable of rejecting foreign cells and bacteria. When these animals received the teeming gut world of the TLR5-deficient mice, they too began eating more and developed the same metabolic-syndrome symptoms that their donors had. In other words, the obesity profile of the heavier mice had been transferred to normal mice. "So, applying the logic to humans," says Gewirtz, "we know that to gain weight and become obese, [it] requires you to eat more. The question is, Why do people eat more? Our results suggest that one reason people might be eating more is because of changes in their intestinal bacteria."

A more fundamental question, then, is, What causes changes in gut microbiota? Many things, says Gewirtz, including the use of antibiotics, cleaner water and improved sanitation and hygiene in general, which influences the type and amount of microbes that reside in the intestines. In the current study, scientists found that in TLR5-deficient animals, the total percentage of 150 species of bacteria in the gut was three to four times higher than in normal mice, while 125 other types of bacteria were less common. "We don't have a sense of which is more important yet - that some of those species are missing, or that some are in greater abundance," he says. The net effect, however, is that in the absence of TLR5, the community of microbes changes and, as Gewirtz says, "when the intestinal bacteria is changed, the host response changes with them, and that may predispose you to a variety of diseases of which obesity and metabolic syndrome are perhaps the most mild."

Studying those changes is the next step for scientists like Gewirtz who want to understand the precise link between intestinal microbiota and obesity. An important part of that investigation will involve having an accurate map of the genetic makeup of those gut bugs. And in a separate paper published Wednesday in Nature, an international group of scientists generated the most comprehensive genetic map to date of human gut microbes, using 124 human fecal samples, which gives scientists just the critical window they need to figure out which species of bugs tend to reside in our intestines and which may contribute to weight gain.”