Word: gutting
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Call it the law that just won't die. Six months after France's ruling Conservatives voted to gut the nation's famous 35-hour work week, anecdotal evidence suggests most companies are sticking with it. French corporations and smaller firms furiously denounced the Socialist's 1998 work-week reduction, and last year's law change allows employers to force staff to work longer hours. But most bosses appear to have stuck with the shorter week, to avoid disputes with leisure-loving employees, and, it seems, as a useful tool in dealing with the growing economic downturn...
...Clinic in Arizona report a very small study of nine individuals - three of normal weight, three who were morbidly obese and three who underwent gastric-bypass surgery. The team found that each group harbored a different intestinal zoo of microbes and that following their surgery, the gastric-bypass patients' gut bugs ended up looking much more similar to those of the normal-weight patients. (See the Year in Health, from...
What might be happening, suspects DiBaise, is that each person's ability to extract energy and store fat from food changes depending on which combination of bugs are living in the gut. Those who are morbidly obese, it seems, tend to nurture bugs that promote the fat-storage process, which might be a factor in their excessive weight gain. The bypass patients appeared to follow a similar pattern but in the opposite direction, eating less first and then developing bugs appropriate to that diet. It's not clear how the physical act of reducing food intake drives that change...
...none of this means that downing the latest probiotic yogurts, which contain certain strains of good gut bacteria, should be the next weight-loss craze. For one thing, says DiBaise, the strains that were dominant in the normal-weight people are not the same as those promoted in the popular probiotic yogurts. Second, there is no evidence that probiotic products can do anything about weight loss; the latest scientific studies have shown only that probiotics can relieve antibiotic-related diarrhea, as well as alleviate IBS and aide regularity. "It is interesting to look at microbial flora," says Lynne McFarland...
...least, not yet. More studies are needed to follow the same people as they lose weight through diet and exercise, to see if the composition of their gut flora changes - as it did with the gastric-bypass patients. What's more, notwithstanding the seeming cause-and-effect link between gut flora and weight, that relationship can be deceiving; a third factor entirely may be causing both - a diet of highly processed foods, for instance, suggests Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale Prevention Research Center. What's more, says Katz, "regardless of the variation of gut flora in the population...