Brain Gut 9: What Really Killed Michael Jackson
Today, we are going to dive into the gut flora story a bit deeper than we did in our first gut flora post to help you understand how a a change in gut flora might lead to changes in your health by altering your hormone panel. Obesity is an inflammatory brain condition. Where does the infection come from? The gut flora actually is what causes humans to become fat. It has to due with shear numbers and the species of bacteria in our gut. There is a particular flora that produces adiposity and obesity in humans. These bacteria make something called FIAF (Fasting induced adipose factor) that control this process. This factor blocks lipoprotein lipase (LPL) in fat cells. LPL allows us to convert dietary Free Fatty Acids carried in lipoproteins into neutral fats that are stored in adipocytes. Non Geeks: Our gut bacteria makes humans fat. Geek Alert: The FIAF is made by our liver, muscles, and our small bowel wall when food sources are in short supply. This is the signal to stop storing fat in our fat cells when food is scarce. What is not well appreciated by many is that the FIAF in our intestinal wall is controlled 100{a7b724a0454d92c70890dedf5ec22a026af4df067c7b55aa6009b4d34d5da3c6} by our gut flora. When we have a simplified gut flora it favors fat cell creation. When our gut flora is complex and healthy, it has 100 trillion cells with 250 species. We tend not to make fat in this instance either! Moreover, when the bacteria are active metabolically due to the presence of simple sugars, production of FIAF ceases, and fat creation is signaled. This implies that our gut flora is directly tied to fat creation in humans. The gut flora’s action is directly signaled to the brain via the afferent nerve fibers in the vagus nerve. In those newly created fat cells, a protein called leptin is also produced, and acts as a score keeper for the brain of how much fat is stored in the body. This messenger is sent to the brain around midnight when we are sleeping allowing the brain to assess total energy balance in the body.