Rise in antibiotic use related to diabetes and obesity

Americans are exposed to anywhere from 10 to 20 different types of antibiotics during childhood, which may reduce our drug resistance and diminish our ability to fight off certain infections resistant to antibiotics. This overexposure can also bring our concomitant increase of obesity, diabetes, allergies and asthma, according to new research published journal nature.

Dr. Martin Blaser, researcher in the study and a microbiologist at New York University suggests that bacterial colonies, especially within the human digestive tract, dramatically changed in the last century. Bacteria are vital for proper digestion, metabolize nutrients and fight off the infection have declined drastically in recent years 80 to 100 — coinciding with the increased use of antibiotics.

As key bacteria die (often the side effect of using antibiotics to kill harmful pathogens), Blaser said that never can recover those colonies useful flora, leaving open the body to diseases such as asthma and allergies and digestive disorders. Two hormones produced by the stomach (ghrelin and leptin) have been found to exhibit different behaviors in the absence of some bacteria, once much more widespread in the stomach longer found today. These hormones are essential to alert the brain that the body is starved and, according to the Blaser, might be misfires bacterial imbalances, issuing false signals and ultimately leading to diseases such as diabetes and obesity.

It may just be the above prescribed antibiotics for guilt; cattle raised on American soil were fed about 29 million pounds of antibiotics in 2009 — more than 80 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States.

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Tags: antibiotic-resistant, antibiotics, livestock antibiotics, bacterial colonies, diabetes, obesity

This entry was published on Thursday, August 25, 2011 to 12:00 am and is filed under green living, health, , organic, organic food, Live organic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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