SamKitten demonstrates the best way to deal with the East Coast’s current triple-H (hot, hazy, humid) weather. You do good work, RedKitten.
And last night’s dinner here involved the first of this year’s basil crop and the end of last year’s slow-roasted tomato sauce, so there are some consolations to weather more typical of the Mediterranean than the North Atlantic, or so I tell myself.
Also, scientists are giving us a new excuse for the way last summer’s outfits seem to spontaneously shrink while in storage, because maybe it’s the bacteria that makes us fat:
… The bacteria-made-me-fat idea has been gathering steam since 2006. In that year, Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University and colleagues reported in a paper in Nature that obese mice and slim mice have different populations of gut bacteria. Crucially, they showed that the bacteria caused obesity, rather than obesity producing a specific mix of bacteria. When the scientists plucked bacteria called Firmicutes from obese mice, then put them in the bacteria-free guts of mice raised in a sterile environment, the latter bulked up within 10 to 14 days—even though they ate less.
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Why? Firmicutes, it seems, are more adept at liberating calories from food than are bacteria from the other common lineage, Bacteroidetes. Firmicutes can digest complex sugars that neither the mice’s own enzymes nor Bacteroidetes can, breaking them into simple sugars and fatty acids that the mice’s intestines then absorb and turn into more mouse. People harbor bacteria from these same two lineages, with the obese among us having more Firmicutes and fewer Bacteroidetes than slim people, exactly as in fat and lean mice. When Gordon’s team had 12 obese people follow either a low-fat or a low-carb diet to lose weight, the result was more Bacteroidetes and fewer Firmicutes—the profile of slim people. The more Bacteroidetes, the more weight the volunteers lost.
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[…] Not surprisingly for a field this new, the precise way in which gut bacteria affect weight is a matter of intense dispute. The idea that different bacteria extract more or fewer calories from the food we send their way, as Gordon’s studies suggest, is only one possibility. Another possible explanation is that gut bacteria contribute to obesity (as well as to type 2 diabetes, which often goes along with being overweight) by altering the immune system. The idea here is that gut bacteria interact with intestinal cells in a way that causes them to secrete cytokines, molecules that can cause low-grade inflammation. This inflammation can, in turn, trigger insulin resistance (the mark of type 2 diabetes) and increased appetite, which is an effective way to put on weight.
Is it just me, or is there something ironic about something called Firmy-cutes leading to an outbreak of Flabby-but-such-a-nice-personality?
JL
“..to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free..”
Mum
I’m not sure if it’s ironic, but there’s definitely something out-of-whack about something called firmicutes being related to flab.
I’m very jealous of your new basil, mostly because I am without a kitchen. Right now it’s in the late stages of remodeling. I’m without a sink for at least ten days, and the range and range hood are lying in the dining and living room. There is so much in the way of clutter and boxes that I can barely find the toaster and the microwave and the cereal, which pretty much describes the sum total of my culinary range at this point in time.
Enjoy your basil. One of the best, and most simple, things I’ve ever made is a pasta dish that I got from Nora Ephron’s “Heartburn.” Pasta (I use linguine or thin spaghetti), chopped fresh basil, diced ripe fresh tomatoes from the garden or the farmstand, salt, and a little pepper. Just cook and drain the pasta, add tomatoes, basil, a little salt and pepper. Toss and serve. It’s phenomenal!
fucen tarmal
honey do these prokaryotes make me look fat?
Todd
That’s how I kept reading it.
Tattoosydney
Oh my god he’s so cute I just want to blow raspberries on his little fat tummy just so I can hear him giggle!
…
Ahem. As you were.
Porlock Junior
Firmicutes?? Do they mutate into midiclorians?
BTW, haze & humidity? Mediterranean? Hmm, maybe when they exported Mediterranean climates to 4 or 5 other places in the world, they left out the worst part. Dry, dry, dry is what’s notable about the Med. summer. Along with the wildfires at the end, of course. Nobody’s perfect.
Restrung
Something wrong with that?
edit: ya, you said it.
monkeyboy
I can envision that someone may start selling something that will kill the Firmicutes in you guts so that you extract less nutrition from you food which would enable you to eat more.
Yes scientific results can be perverted.
Some how I am reminded of fake fats such as Olestra which is indigestible and only cause minor side effects such as anal leakage.
asiangrrlMN
Awwwwww, SamKitten is soooo cute! I can’t believe he’s almost one. And, feel better soon, little one.
MikeJ
Poop transplants to rebalance colonic flora are done via a naso-gastric tube or orally.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22098-2004Mar24?language=printer
Bon appetit!
Platonicspoof
Cute title, but dated, as I believe the taxonomists have recently reclassified Firmicutes as Fatsia rotundifolia, subspecies algorus.
See Sweetson, Cate: Bact. Rev., 30:257, 2010.
Bill E Pilgrim
@MikeJ: Not all that surprising, after all FOX news and the other wingnut pundits have been funneling crap down people’s throats for years.
Ash Can
@Mum: That sounds fabulous, although I’d add a little bit of extra-virgin olive oil. Fresh mozzarella occurs to me as well, either cut up into it or on the side. And some nice, crusty bread, too.
It’s been steamy hot here (although not as bad as on the East Coast), and I’ve been looking up recipes that require minimal cooking. I’m going to add this one to the list.
And speaking of yummy, oh, that Samkitten! Now that Bottle Rocket is big enough to walk and bicycle around the neighborhood on his own, I look back fondly on the days when he was Sammy’s size. Kids may be high-maintenance at that age, but they’re a special kind of cute.
satby
So hot my basil is flowering in spite of my best efforts to pinch them off. Time for pesto!
And OT, there’s a Facebook group “One Million Strong for a Job Creation Bill” that I started (hey, if it could get Betty White on SNL) that I invite all Facebookers to join.
PurpleGirl
Today is Ringo Starr’s 70th Birthday.
aimai
Thanks for the picture, Redkitten and Annie. I’m in the same heat zone and I’m nearly prostrate with it. Only the firmicutes of Samkitten can make me smile.
aimai
Svensker
Awwww, major attack of the cutes. And just looking at that picture made me feel about 20 degrees cooler (or about 90).
Comrade Mary
Aw, the little tyke looks as if he’s feeling better. It’s awful when they get sick. Me, I might decamp to the library and free wi-fi this afternoon. I pre-cooled the house last night after my airing out bike ride, but it’s muggy already.
And now I have to go tend to the drooping drama queens in the backyard. I already got some nice pesto from about a third of the basil plants, so let’s see if I can keep the rest alive for another batch. And I think there’s the barest hint of a blush showing on one or two tomatoes …
Betsy
@aimai:
Me too. It got me out of my sweltering, AC-less apartment and onto campus to work bright and early, though. Who knows, maybe I’ll actually accomplish something?
And, requisite awwwwwww, SamKitten!
RedKitten
@Comrade Mary: That pic was actually from the weekend, and he was feeling great. This week, he’s not been well at all. He picked up an ear infection AND some sort of generic kid virus. The virus caused the back of his throat to blister up, which has put him off his food. Since 4pm yesterday, he’s only had a few swallows of liquids, but he’s not dehydrated (I brought him to the ER this morning.) So we’re home now, and he’s napping, and I’m going to try him again later with some Pedialyte popsicles, poor little guy.
Paul in KY
What a happy baby. You go Samkitten!
twiffer
i’m reading this:
in conjunction with this:
and wondering at the conclusion. manually changing the bacterial makeup of the gut to add more firmicutes can cause obesity. however, they then seem to demonstrate that changing one’s diet will change the ratios of gut bacteria. so, this would seem to lead to the conclusion that, well, nothing has changed. healthy eating and excercise is still the way to lose weight and get in shape. interesting as a root cause for obesity, and possibly for advances in understanding digestive processes. yet it reads like a magic bullet was found; i see no evidence of that (based on this snippet, at least).
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Sam looks tickled pink with life. And look at that Apple Sauce pot belly/
Gus
My god that kid is scary cute. The only thing cuter than a chubby puppy belly is a chubby baby belly. I hope he feels better soon.
canuckistani
That picture eases the pain of a heatwave
Comrade Mary
@RedKitten: Oh, no! Really, I hope he feels better soon. Being sick sucks, being sick in a heat wave sucks more, and being a wee kid sick in a heat wave must be the worst.
silentbeep
Nope not ironic. Not everyone likes firm. Hard to believe but there are those that prefer the larger folks, shocking I know! We all don’t share the same atrraction preferences.
Uloborus
@twiffer:
These processes can be interactive. Changing what you eat changes the bacteria distribution in your gut, and that distribution changes your weight. Also, low-carb diets working is… a weird thing that makes no sense medically, so this might be the explanation. It would still imply that no matter how you change the balance of bacteria, changing that balance will affect your weight.
But the other thing to remember here is that they’ve only proven this in mice. It merely seems likely with humans.