HEALTH

                           This Is Why Your Diet Won't Work

Have you ever counted calories, sworn off dairy, or purchased an Atkins meal only to find that your diet of choice had little to no effect? In all likelihood, you answered ‘yes.’ And scientists are now about to explain why it is that our diets so often fail. Most of us, writes Dr. Maitreyi Raman, a gastroenterologist and physician nutritionist, “are missing the finer details when it comes to the nutritional composition of food on [our] plates.”

So what are these “finer details” that Dr. Raman refers to? It’s the thing we’ve long been told to avoid: bacteria.

Deep inside your gut, past your mouth, down your tubular esophagus, through the stomach, lies a complex world of 100 trillion bacteria, housed mainly in your large intestine. These bacteria outnumber human cells by 10 times and have 100 times as many genes as the entire human genome. In total, these bacteria make up two to six pounds of your weight. Meet, what scientists now think, is the control room for your body: the microbiome.

In 2007, the completion of Human Microbiome Project, a five-year endeavor aimed at identifying microbial communities and the relationship between the microbiome and human health, greatly expanded our knowledge of the human microbiome. Since then, scientists around the globe have been dissecting the findings. Initial studies show our microbiome’s intricate connection with nearly every element of our bodies, from our immune system to brain neurons.

“What was a block box to scientists and clinicians alike is slowly opening up,” says Dr. Bruce German, Professor of Food Science and Technology and Director of the Foods For Health Institute at U.C. Davis. For example, one key study inoculated mice with microbes from the guts of lean and obese humans. The mice given obese microbes gained weight, while those given lean microbes did not.

“That was the epiphany for the world,” says Dr. German.

Since then, similar experiments have been completed with a focus on autism, anxiety, autoimmune disease and more. “Single species of gut bacteria can reverse autism-related social behavior in mice,” reads an article title on the Baylor College of Medicine website.