Antibiotic use has grown along with obesity. Coincidence?

In recent years, scientists have developed a increasing appreciation for the “microbiome,” the collection of mostly useful bacteria to help us digest food, metabolize key nutrients and ward off invading pathogens investigators have cataloged thousands of these organisms during the National Institutes of Health’s Human Microbiome Project, begun in 2008.

Blaser is interested in why so many bacteria contain colonized the human body for so long the simple fact that they have strongly suggests that they serve some useful purpose except these bacteria have come up to under attack in the last 80 or so years thanks to the development of antibiotics the drugs certainly deserve a few of the credit for extending the U.S. lifespan, Blaser notes a baby born today can expect to live 78 years, 15 years longer than a baby born in 1940 except in many respects, an antibiotic targets a particular disease the technique a nuclear bomb targets a criminal, causing much collateral damage to things you’d rather not destroy.

“Antibiotics kill the bacteria we do want, as well as persons we don’t,” Blaser writes, “Sometimes, our friendly flora never fully recover” and that can leave us additional susceptible to various kinds of diseases, especially considering to the typical American is exposed to 10 to 20 antibiotics during childhood alone blaser points out to the rise (let along overuse) of antibiotics coincides with dramatic increases in the occurrence of allergies, asthma, Type 1 diabetes, obesity and inflammatory bowel disease that isn’t proof to the two are related, but it’s a question worth exploring.