美国国家公共电台 NPR Diet Hit A Snag? Your Gut Bacteria May Be Partly To Blame

 

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

So if you've ever been on a diet but you didn't lose the weight you would hope to lose, your gut¹ bacteria might be part of the problem. NPR's Allison Aubrey reports on how the microbes in our guts² may either help or hinder weight loss.

ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE³: This is kind of an odd thing to think about, but, the bacteria that live in our guts can actually do us a favor. They eat what we can't. Martin Blaser is a professor at NYU Langone Medical Center. He says, consider what happens when we eat an apple. We digest most of it...

MARTIN BLASER: But there's a certain part of the apple that can't be absorbed. We don't have the right enzymes⁴ to digest every bit of it, but our bacteria can.

AUBREY: After the bacteria consume what we can't, they produce byproducts that we can digest, and that's another source of calories for us.

BLASER: Somewhere between 5 percent and 15 percent of all our calories come from that kind of digestion⁵, where the microbes are providing energy for us that we couldn't ordinarily get. And, you know, if times were bad, if we were starving, we would really welcome that.

AUBREY: But these days, when many people want to lose weight, we may not want these extra calories the microbes give us. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota wanted to know if they could identify certain types of bacteria that might influence the success of dieting. Purna Kashyap, a gastroenterologist, helped to lead the study. It included people who were enrolled⁶ in a one-year lifestyle program. They were counseled to follow a low-calorie diet and agreed to be monitored closely.

PURNA KASHYAP: We started with the premise⁷ that people have different microbial makeups⁹ in the gut, and that could influence how well they do with the dieting regimen.

AUBREY: And it turns out when Kashyap and his team compared the dieters who were successful with those who were not, they did find differences.

KASHYAP: We found that people who lost at least 5 percent of their body weight had a different gut bacteria as compared to those who did not lose 5 percent of their body weight.

AUBREY: For instance, they found an abundance of a bacteria called Dialister in the guts of people who did not lose much weight, and another type of bacteria was high in successful dieters. Kashyap says, down the road, if they can show the same results in a larger group of dieters, they'd like to use this information to help people lose weight.

KASHYAP: What you would hope to do is to be able to individualize care for people, and we would also try to develop new probiotics which we can use to change the microbial makeup⁸.

AUBREY: But manipulating the mix of microbes in your gut is easier said than done, according to NYU's Martin Blaser. It's complicated, he says.

BLASER: In part, it depends how lucky we'll be. Whether the organisms that we think are beneficial, we can cultivate them well so that they could become next year's probiotics, that remains¹⁰ unknown.

AUBREY: He says if it's possible, it's still some years off. Allison Aubrey, NPR News.

1 gut   

n.[pl.]胆量；内脏；adj.本能的；vt.取出内脏

参考例句：

• It is not always necessary to gut the fish prior to freezing.冷冻鱼之前并不总是需要先把内脏掏空。
• My immediate gut feeling was to refuse.我本能的直接反应是拒绝。

2 guts   

v.狼吞虎咽，贪婪地吃，飞碟游戏（比赛双方每组5人，相距15码，互相掷接飞碟）；毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的第三人称单数 )；取出…的内脏n.勇气( gut的名词复数 )；内脏；消化道的下段；肠

参考例句：

• I'll only cook fish if the guts have been removed. 鱼若已收拾干净，我只需烧一下即可。
• Barbara hasn't got the guts to leave her mother. 巴巴拉没有勇气离开她妈妈。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 enzymes   

n. 酶，酵素

参考例句：

• It was said that washing powders containing enzymes remove stains more efficiently. 据说加酶洗衣粉除污更有效。
• Among the enzymes which are particularly effective are pepsin, papain. 在酶当中特别有效的是胃朊酶、木瓜酶。

5 digestion   

n.消化，吸收

参考例句：

• This kind of tea acts as an aid to digestion.这种茶可助消化。
• This food is easy of digestion.这食物容易消化。

6 enrolled   

adj.入学登记了的v.[亦作enrol]( enroll的过去式和过去分词 )；登记，招收，使入伍（或入会、入学等），参加，成为成员；记入名册；卷起，包起

参考例句：

• They have been studying hard from the moment they enrolled. 从入学时起，他们就一直努力学习。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He enrolled with an employment agency for a teaching position. 他在职业介绍所登了记以谋求一个教师的职位。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 premise   

n.前提；v.提论，预述

参考例句：

• Let me premise my argument with a bit of history.让我引述一些史实作为我立论的前提。
• We can deduce a conclusion from the premise.我们可以从这个前提推出结论。

8 makeup   

n.组织；性格；化装品

参考例句：

• Those who failed the exam take a makeup exam.这次考试不及格的人必须参加补考。
• Do you think her beauty could makeup for her stupidity?你认为她的美丽能弥补她的愚蠢吗？

9 makeups   

n.天性( makeup的名词复数 )；性格；气质；组成成分

参考例句：

10 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。