Ask the geneticist first, do genes determine fat and thin figure? Genetics has decrypted the complete gene sequence of human beings, obtained the full-spectrum gene of a person, and speculated that his body is fat and thin with an accuracy rate of 60%. The accuracy of gene speculation is a little higher than the probability of random speculation, but it can't prove that human body is genetically determined. So, are there any other reasons to decide whether you are fat or thin, or are you fat or thin for no reason, just randomly distributed?
The biologist raised his hand to answer the question. As long as you look at the microbial colonies in a person's intestines, you can judge his fatness with an accuracy rate of 90%. It is not your innate genes that determine your figure, but the alien species that join your body the day after tomorrow. In other words, a pile of bacteria in your stomach can make the final decision, not counting your fat parents.
The weight of intestinal bacteria
Bacteria are far more important than genes in determining your figure. Is it a little hard to imagine and accept? Don't worry, don't be too busy denying bacteria, let's look at the power of bacteria.
First of all, compared with human genes, intestinal bacteria win by number. Each of us carries about 20,000 human genes, while we carry 2 million to 20 million microbial genes. The quantitative ratio of human genes to bacterial genes is1:100 ~1000. In the face of microbial genes in the body, the number of human genes can be ignored.
Secondly, compared with human genes, intestinal bacteria are diverse and diverse. Your genes are 99.9% the same as those around you. You and the people around you may have the same rate of intestinal bacteria as 10%.
Biologists take samples from the Human Microbiology Project (HMP) and randomly select two healthy people. There is a bacterium in the intestinal sample of A and a bacterium in the intestinal sample of B, and the probability that the two bacteria are the same is only 10%. The samples of the Human Microbiology Project are mainly from healthy people in the United States. If they are taken from patients with gastrointestinal diseases or people with different eating habits in other countries, the probability of their intestinal bacteria being the same will be lower.
Your genes are very different from others', but your flora is very different from others'.
Your uniqueness is not only reflected in your unique thoughts, but also in your unique flora combination.
Effect of food on intestinal bacteria
Please name some intestinal bacteria. Did you blurt out Escherichia coli? Escherichia coli is the most familiar intestinal bacteria, however, it has no say in your figures, and its number only accounts for 1% of intestinal bacteria.
You may not have heard of many other bacteria in the intestine, such as Bacteroides, and another kind of bacteria called Prevost. These two bacteria are dominant in our intestinal flora.
The food we eat in our stomachs cannot be digested and absorbed by ourselves, and the enzymes in our bodies cannot degrade most complex polysaccharides and plant polysaccharides. These complex molecular foods are broken down by bacteria living in the intestines.
Bacteroides and Przewalskii are the most important microbial communities in mammalian digestive system. They are our friendly forces and are mutually beneficial to us. The food we eat is also the food of bacteria. Bacteroides and plasmodium help us to break down complex molecules in food and process them into simpler molecules for intestinal absorption of nutrients.
The difference between these two bacteria is that they have different food preferences. Bacteroides likes to eat meat, and Platycladus orientalis likes to be vegetarian. Bacteroides is the dominant bacteria in human intestines that eat a lot of protein and animal fat. People who eat a lot of carbohydrates, especially foods containing a lot of cellulose, have dominant bacteria in their intestines.
According to the intestinal bacteria sampling of African children, it was found that 53% of the intestinal bacteria were Proteus, but it was difficult to find traces of Proteus in the intestines of children of the same age in Europe. Przewalski's gazelle is more suitable for degrading plant polysaccharides because of its insufficient ability to degrade host polysaccharides.
When we talk about healthy eating, a common phrase is: "You are what you eat." There is some truth in this sentence. The principle behind it is that the food you eat constitutes the bacteria in your body, and your bacteria dominate your health.
However, half of the sentence "You ate it" is wrong. Food can change your bacterial flora, but the effect is limited. It takes a long time and is inefficient to improve the flora of intestinal bacteria only by changing the food intake. The flora in adults is relatively stable. Two people live under one roof and eat the same three meals a day. 10 years later, the flora in the intestine is still very different.
Intestinal flora that determines slim figure
A single bacterium in the intestine has no decisive influence on this number. The main food is vegetarian, and there are many fat people in the population dominated by Przewalski's gazelle in the intestine. The main food is meat, eggs and milk, and slim and thin people can be seen everywhere among people with bacteroides in the intestine.
A dietary study done by Harvard University found that some foods can make people fat, while others can lose weight. For example, French fries are the black hand of gaining weight, which is easy to understand. French fries are high in fat and sugar. But the most effective food to lose weight is not vegetables and fruits, but yogurt and nuts with high fat content. The fat in yogurt and nuts does not add a force to the body fat, but inhibits the growth of fat.
What's the difference between fat that makes people fat and fat that helps people lose weight? The main difference lies in the different composition of bacteria that degrade these two fats in the intestine. Bacteria have a taste preference just like you. They can work actively when they meet the food they like, but they will be inactive when they meet the food they don't like. So how does the intestinal flora work? Unfortunately, biologists don't know much about the working mode of bacteria that affect our digestion and absorption. However, experiments on specific flora confirmed the conclusion that intestinal microflora can help obese people lose weight without changing their diet.
Human Microbiology Project Group (HMP) cultivated a group of sterile mice, kept their original diet unchanged, and transplanted the intestinal flora of obese mice into sterile mice to increase their weight. The intestinal flora of slim mice was transplanted into sterile mice, and the weight of mice was reduced.
Cross-species bacterial colony transplantation also showed the same result. Transplanting the intestinal flora of fat mice to infertile mice is also fatter than mice transplanted with the bacteria of fat mice.
Although the food intake is the same, the intestinal flora of mice helps them digest food, and the efficiency of different flora in digesting food is different. The bacteria of fat mice can digest food more effectively, so fat mice can get more energy from the same food. In addition, bacteria in the intestine can also affect the behavior of mice. Mice transplanted with the bacteria of fat mice eat more than before, which not only has high digestion and absorption efficiency, but also eats more food, so they have been gaining weight.
The Human Microbiology Project Group (HMP) is studying extracting intestinal bacteria from thin people, making them into slimming bacteria, and transplanting them into fat people to help them lose weight. Unpublished studies have found that weight-loss bacteria are very successful in sterile mice, but it will take some time to ensure safe transplantation into humans.
The biggest function of slimming bacteria is that you don't have to change your daily habits, diet, exercise and diarrhea. Relying on foreign bacterial helpers, you can lose weight healthily and easily.
Genes can't determine your figure. The role of food and exercise is limited. The biggest contributor to staying slim is the bacteria living in your stomach.