Regardless, the less you eat, the less possible caloric intake.Discovery News wrote: June 19, 2006 — A microbe that converts waste into methane for daily flatulence could make the difference between fat people and thin people, according to a new study that looks into the menagerie of microorganisms living in our colon.
Called Methanobrevibacter smithii (M. smithii), the bacterium is key to how well we process calories, reports Jeffrey Gordon, director of the Center for Genome Sciences at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, and and his graduate student Buck Samuel.
The bacteria are essentially the body’s waste-removal workhorses. They mop up hydrogen and byproducts released by the gut bacteria, helping them digest complex sugars.
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All the mice then received the same amount of food – a standard rodent chow rich in plant polysaccharides. Mice colonized with both B. thetaiotaomicron and M. smithii had significantly more fat than animals colonized with either microbe alone or with the other bacteria.
The researchers concluded that M. smithii collaborate with B. thetaiotaomicron to increase calorie intake from food.
"M. smithii acts as a ‘power broker’ in the distal gut community," they wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, where the study was published..
Indeed, without M. smithii’s activity and synergy with B. thetaiotaomicron, accumulation of byproducts would slow sugar digestion, basically inhibiting the absorption of calories.
The finding would explain why different people gain different amounts of calories from identical foods.
Personally, I've kept off all the weight I lost over the past 2 years
