Will Probiotics = The New "WLS-In-A-Pill"? (New Study)
I was listening to a program on our local high school radio station earlier tonight. It is a little public service 1 or 2 minute-long news program that is boadcast on the station one night a week called MicrobeWorld. It is produced by the American Society of Microbiologists. 
Tonight's episode of MicrobeWorld concerned the resuts of a recent university medical study/experiment involving probiotics. The researchers in the study injected probiotic bacteria into the digestive tracts of mice to see what effects it might have on their diet and digestion. Unexpectedly, they noticed that the mice then began losing weight, despite being fed a "normal" diet.
Upon closer examination, the researchers discovered that the probiotics were actually altering or somehow blocking the effect of the bile salts excreted by the liver. This resulted in the mice absorbing less of the fat that they were digesting than they otherwise would have., and hence their weight loss.
This "exicting finding" by the researchers has got them thinking of all kinds of poosible implications for human weight loss formulations in the future.
Just think of it -- what if we could have a true, major fat malabsorption effect w/o having to have surgery - i.e. RNY or DS - by taking a pill daily or weekly instead? (of course, we'd probably still need a procedure to restrict volume of food intake, e.g. V.S.G. or RNY "pouch").
The researchers are even thinking that somehow the opposite effect could be engineered with probiotics, which would allow them to create a formulation which would cause greater absorption of nutrients from relief food supplies provided to countries suffering from famine, to make it more likely that the victims would be able to thrive off of same.
Tonight's episode of MicrobeWorld concerned the resuts of a recent university medical study/experiment involving probiotics. The researchers in the study injected probiotic bacteria into the digestive tracts of mice to see what effects it might have on their diet and digestion. Unexpectedly, they noticed that the mice then began losing weight, despite being fed a "normal" diet.
Upon closer examination, the researchers discovered that the probiotics were actually altering or somehow blocking the effect of the bile salts excreted by the liver. This resulted in the mice absorbing less of the fat that they were digesting than they otherwise would have., and hence their weight loss.
This "exicting finding" by the researchers has got them thinking of all kinds of poosible implications for human weight loss formulations in the future.
Just think of it -- what if we could have a true, major fat malabsorption effect w/o having to have surgery - i.e. RNY or DS - by taking a pill daily or weekly instead? (of course, we'd probably still need a procedure to restrict volume of food intake, e.g. V.S.G. or RNY "pouch").
The researchers are even thinking that somehow the opposite effect could be engineered with probiotics, which would allow them to create a formulation which would cause greater absorption of nutrients from relief food supplies provided to countries suffering from famine, to make it more likely that the victims would be able to thrive off of same.
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