Excellent read. Even though I did my master's thesis in an obesity lab, I was not aware of this connection! I was wondering if the bacteria in the gut are also affected by i.v. injections of antibiotics... Usually we take them orally, so it makes sense that it attacks the populations in the gut, but what about i.v.? Is the amount of probiotic gut bacteria less affected when the oral pathway is avoided?
Talk about good timing, I've started reading The End of Food and the first part of this article ties in nicely with that. I believe this is caused by antibiotics killing off bacteria in the digestive system, and they actually bring that up later in the article. Somebody with a bio background would have a greater understanding of how that works than I do. Having an "anti-antibiotic" though, isn't that just a probiotic? The development of which is very interesting, having control over a microbiome like that would be a great health development, I would hazard to guess. Nowadays we do that in a single ten-minute long competition in which a group of people see who can eat the most hot dogs. Good to see that not much as changed.And yet, scientists still could not explain the mystery of antibiotics and weight gain.
In 1955, a crowd gathered in a hotel ballroom to watch as feed salesmen climbed onto a scale; the men were competing to see who could gain the most weight in four months, in imitation of the cattle and hogs that ate their antibiotic-laced food. Pfizer sponsored the competition.
I think the currently available probiotics are quite primitive compared to what they're imagining. One thing they didn't touch on in the article is how difficult growing most bacteria in a lab is. The bacteria that populate us are so interdependent that it is literally impossible to culture the majority of them. In order for a probiotic to work in the most effective way, I think it would be important to understand much more about our gut ecosystem. Having an "anti-antibiotic" though, isn't that just a probiotic?