Gut Flora, Antibiotics and Pro-Biotics Might Equal Balanced Weight?

An interesting post about "Manipulating the Microbiome" to regulate weight gain.

From the article:

In a study, published Aug. 26 in the journal Nature Immunology, a research team based at the University of Chicago was able to unravel some of the mechanisms that regulate this weight gain. They focused on the relationship between the immune system, gut bacteria, digestion and obesity. They showed how weight gain requires not just caloric overload but also a delicate, adjustable -- and transmissible -- interplay between intestinal microbes and the immune response.

"Diet-induced obesity depends not just on calories ingested but also on the host's microbiome," said the study's senior author Yang-Xin Fu, MD, PhD, professor of pathology at the University of Chicago Medicine. For most people, he said, "host digestion is not completely efficient, but changes in the gut flora can raise or lower digestive efficiency."

So the old adage "you are what you eat" needs to be modified, Fu suggested, to include, "as processed by the microbial community of the distal gut and as regulated by the immune system."

I'm taking this as a reminder that I was feeling better when I took a pro-biotic every day. Time to return to that.

Watching the Skies...

I can smell rain, and hear occasional thunder.

No rain yet.

Hoping. (Creek is no longer running, and trees look sad.)

Alas, Babelfish

And then there are the days when a web page spends five minutes trying to get you to sign in with Facebook. When you click "No, thanks" it offers you a registration page you cannot get around. So, you give up and pop over to see what the separate Bing setup looks like (the same people, but different pages) and the system is fighting Firefox and No Script, neither liking the page. When you get the page to hold still, Bing's translator keeps printing the same French on the other side.

So I get to double-check my understanding of this word by word, it having been much too long ago that I took French:

Voici les dernières nouveautés du monde de l’entreprises

Here is the last novelty of world enterprise?

Babelfish could make incredible bloopers -- I learned to double check by translating back, to see what the system thought in reverse -- but I will miss its simple improvement of my understanding.

And they won't have me looking at their ads while waiting for my translation. May I suggest a FAIL? Must find a translator I like and install on the browser.