Antibiotics Promote Obesity, Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome

Antibiotics, recently linked to skyrocketing mental illness rates, are now being identified as a player in the soaring obesity rates around the globe.

Previously, it was revealed that excessive antibiotic usage may also be responsible for spawning drug-resistant superbugs that continue to emerge worldwide.

The reason that antibiotics are potentially making you fat, mentally unhealthy, and suffer from gut problems has to do with the way it affects bacteria within your gut. While antibiotics do kill harmful ‘bad’ bacteria as intended, they also destroy ‘good’ bacteria in the gut which help to regulate more than just gut health. In fact, studies are finding that gut bacteria may be responsible for regulating overall health, including mental health and stability.

In one study regarding the depletion of ‘good’ bacteria in the gut, researchers explained how antibiotics administered to mice ultimately resulted in altered behaviors far beyond diarrhea and pain:

“It may be that those changes in gut bacteria not only contribute to the generation of gut symptoms, like diarrhea or pain, but may also contribute to this altered behavior that we see in those patients,” said researcher Stephen Collins, of the Farncombe Family Digestive Health Research Institute at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.

Experts are now drawing a conclusion between depleted beneficial bacteria and obesity, as more information comes out over the dangers and repercussions of antibiotic use. Dr. Martin Blaser of New York University Langone Medical Center is one such expert, who has been actively studying the effects of antibiotics on gut bacteria.

Dr. Blaser summarized his findings on the subject, revealing how antibiotics actually have a number of long-term side effects that the medial establishment has previously failed to recognize – or at least report:

They’ve changed health and medicine over the last 70 years. But when doctors prescribe antibiotics, it is based on the belief that there are no long-term effects. We’ve seen evidence that suggests antibiotics may permanently change the beneficial bacteria that we’re carrying.

Honing in on the obesity connection, a studyconducted in April 2011 involving Dr. Blaser found that people treated with antibiotics had a 6-fold increase in post-meal ghrelin, a 20 percent increase in leptin levels, and a 5 percent increase in body mass index 18 months after completing the course of antibiotics. Ghrelin, of course, stimulates the brain in such a manner that leads to not only increased appetite, but also particularly leads to the accumulation of fat in abdominal fat tissue. This type of fat is associated with metabolic syndrome and an increased risk of diabetes.

Dr. Blaser explains:

…antibiotics for H. pylori trick the body into eating more by disrupting hunger hormone levels. Indeed, mice given antibiotics get fatter than their untreated counterparts despite having the same diet.

It is very likely that further research will come out exposing a number of other adverse health effects from antibiotic usage, just as with BPA and antipsychotic drugs. Of course, antibiotics are potentially creating the mental illnesses through gut bacteria depletion which the suicide-linked antipsychotics aim to ‘treat’, playing into the pharmaceutical food chain.

Thankfully, a number of powerful natural antibiotics exist that do not come with such harsh side effects. Concerned over the destructive effects of antibiotics, research has concluded that various amino acids are actually preferable to antibiotics when it comes to treating infection. Other natural options for combating bacteria and infections include: