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Animals raised for use as human food were frequently given antibiotics because it makes them fatter. Dr. Blaser did an experiment to replicate the effects using mice. He found that, sure enough, mice on antibiotics became fatter than those that did not get them.
The children who took antibiotics grew up to have much higher rates of obesity, learning disabilities, asthma, and celiac disease.
20% higher risk of obesity 21% higher risk of a learning disability 32% higher risk of ADHD 90% higher risk of asthma 289% higher risk of celiac disease
The study was powerful. It accounted for differences in health status and demographics between the two groups.
the more antibiotic prescriptions a child received, the greater their risk of developing a chronic disease.
This ongoing depletion may, in part, explain some food allergies.
bacterium may protect against food allergies, he believes. Now the team is experimenting with treating food allergies in humans using oral bacteriotherapy.
test the effectiveness of having people drink the bacteria that produce GLP-1, the active ingredient in the popular weight loss drug Ozempic.12 Early results have demonstrated that drinking the bacteria Akkermansia and other bacteria can help people with diabetes better control their blood sugar, reducing their hemoglobin A1C by 0.6%—which is a significant reduction.13
taking antibiotics early in life may be associated with chronic diseases.
map shows the states with the highest rates of antibiotic use, and the other shows the states with the highest rates of obesity. “They’re essentially the same map,” he told me. The striking parallel
people who took antibiotics were 21% more likely to develop diabetes
People who took five or more courses of antibiotics were 53% more likely to develop diabetes.17 Again, that’s a dose-dependent
studies on antibiotic use being associated with asthma, learning disabilities, diabetes, and celiac blew me away.
Antibiotic use in childhood has been correlated with ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, collectively referred to as inflammatory bowel disease
He told me they had no Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis in Egypt, an observation echoed by doctors throughout Africa and many other countries at the time.
the U.S., I don’t believe these diseases existed before the advent of antibiotics.”
seemed bizarre to me that the cause of these disabling diseases wasn’t a part of the academic field for those specializing in it.
nurses who took an antibiotic long-term were 36 to 70% more likely to have a polyp.
study further suggests a role of the microbiome in colon cancer.
Dr. Mary-Claire King, who discovered the BRCA genes,
ominous observation in 2003. She showed that rates of breast cancer are higher for women born after 1940, compared to women born before 1940, even when the women have the same genetic predisposition.
The Mayo Clinic study, which Dr. Blaser collaborated on, has already found a link between use of one type of antibiotic, cephalosporin, and autism.
women who have a C-section are routinely given an antibiotic just prior to the procedure, their babies are born with antibiotics in their system.
study of more than 55,000 patients found that there is no difference in surgical infection rates when the antibiotics are given to a mother after her baby is born.33
children born by C-section were up to three times more likel...
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born by C-section were more likely to develop colon cancer,
lack of breast-feeding has been associated with inflammatory bowel disease
gut bacteria in liquid or pill form—are now being used to treat psychiatric illness, and they have the potential to unlock what causes mental illness.
some bacteria are known to produce serotonin and other molecules that act on the brain, it’s plausible that we are on the brink of a few major breakthroughs.
week prior, she had been given the antibiotic amoxicillin for a minor bruise after a fall—a bruise for which an antibiotic was not indicated. This spark ignited a forest fire. While amoxicillin pills sound innocent, they killed the “good bacteria” in her colon, allowing the C. diff bacteria to take over.
In recent years in the U.S., more people will die from C. diff than from influenza.
It used to take 21 years on average for bacteria to become resistant to a new antibiotic. Now it takes an average of one year.
Morris. He became a gastroenterologist and eventually researched the topic extensively. Morris learned the real story behind the demonization of cholesterol and saturated fat: The “evidence” that it caused heart disease was shoddy at best. He encouraged his dad to eat butter, whole milk, and the eggs he treasured. After years of discussion, Morris finally convinced him.
Study after study has failed to demonstrate the connection between dietary cholesterol and heart disease, or between the cholesterol in your diet and the cholesterol levels in your blood.
strong scientific research has revealed a stark reality: The cholesterol you eat is generally not absorbed by the body.
the medical establishment rallied together to advance the leading medical recommendation handed down to the public for most of the last 70 years,
Dr. Keys, who had connections in Europe, presented his preliminary data to the WHO in 1955.8 But there he got torn to pieces. Doctors in the audience pointed out that the countries in his study seemed cherry-picked, that many were coastal countries, and that his sampling method was grossly inadequate.
Over the next 15 years, large clinical trial after large clinical trial was done to test Dr. Keys’s ideas. None supported it.
None, however, showed that people actually lived longer if they applied Dr. Keys’s theory.
At the same time, the sugar industry quietly paid scientists who demonized fat.
It’s worth noting that the AHA had been paid $1.7 million by Procter & Gamble, the makers of Crisco, which advertised itself as lower in fat than butter.
Keys had only interviewed about 30 people from each of the countries included, and he’d conducted his diet survey during Lent, when people strictly avoided fat.
Dr. John Yudkin, a prominent British nutrition expert, challenged Dr. Keys throughout the 1960s and ’70s. He argued that sugar was the leading driver of inflammation causing heart disease, not saturated fat.
the food industry increasingly pound sugar and salt into foods in order to make them low-fat and still retain taste.
the results they got were not what they were expecting. There were more cardiac deaths in the low-fat diet group.
That’s not how science is supposed to work.
Critics of Dr. Keys would later explain the findings by suggesting low-fat food had higher amounts of refined carbohydrates, known to increase inflammation of the coronary arteries.
AHA had announced it would license its “healthy heart” seal to restaurants and food companies for foods that met its guidelines for salt, cholesterol, and fat content.
would take Gary Taubes, in his book Rethinking Diabetes, and another independent journalist, Nina Teicholz, author of The Big Fat Surprise, to expose the dogma, decades later.
When he and his team tabulated the results in 1960, it was obvious that saturated-fat intake was not causing heart disease.
