
Can a high fat Paleo Diet cause obesity and diabetes? Maybe, unless
Current evidence indicates obesity and other metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance are influenced by host genetics and lifestyle. This cascade of ever growing diseases is also associated with low-grade inflammation, as indicated by an overabundance of biomarkers in serum. What initiates or triggers the inflammation associated with these metabolic disorders?
Multiple studies in humans and mice have demonstrated that a high fat diet can trigger inflammation (see references below). But a high fat diet alone is not the whole story. If it were, a lot of Paleo dieters would be in trouble. It seems what might be missing from that high fat diet and the gut bugs deep in the gut hold the answer to what triggers the inflammation.
Every person on earth has two genomes. Our human genome, which is a mash up and shuffled deck of DNA from mom and dad, is the one we are familiar with and, for better or worse, stuck with. Our second genome is more dynamic and made up of trillions of bacteria we initially receive during birth from mom and continuously throughout life from the people we hang with, to the foods we eat, and the places we live. Numbering in the thousands of species, our microbial friends (and foe) outnumber our human cells 10 to 1. In other words, humans are 90% microbe and only 10% human. Humbling.
Spawned by the success and technical achievements of the Human Genome Project, an explosion in our understanding of the role of the microbiome (all the genes of our gut microbiota) in human health has literally flipped modern medicine and the understanding
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