Could Your Gut Health Be Causing Your Weight Gain?

Could your poop be related to your weight? It sure can. Our knowledge about the microbiome is increasing day by day, and we are finding that it has a lot to do with our waistlines. The microbiome refers to the bacteria that make up your gut and help you to digest your food. We used to think that these microorganisms were separate from us, but now we are finding they are deeply connected with our biology. We are actually composed of 10 trillion bacteria but only 1 trillion human cells! You are more bacteria than human! We have 23,000 genes but our gut carries over 3 million genes. We have existed in a symbiotic relationship with these organisms since the beginning of humanity, but we have just now started to explore how they might affect our health. We may be controlled by and rely upon them more than we realize, and they secrete many substances that modify everything from our mental health to our weight. However, mainstream medical culture hasn’t quite caught onto the idea that we can manipulate the bacteria in our intestines to affect our a weight in a different way.

What do we know about weight’s relationship to the bacteria in our gut? First of all, people who are heavier have a different composition of bacteria in their colons. For starters, they have a decreased diversity of bacteria. This means thinner people have a wider array of different types of bacteria. Some of these bacteria that are more prevalent in obese individuals do bad things. For starters, they can secrete inflammatory chemicals, and we are now learning…