# Overeating sheep and bacteria that control your brain



## tummyrumbles (Aug 14, 2005)

Lambs can die from overeating disease or enterotoxemia, caused by a bacteria called Clostridium perfringens. This bacteria is common to most mammals, including humans, and normally resides in small numbers in the intestinal tract. This bacteria feeds mainly on sugars & starches. When a lamb overeats a large percentage of these sugars & starches aren't digested and travel through the colon, feeding the bacteria. This causes excessive bacterial growth and the bacteria produces lethal toxins. This disease is usual fatal for sheep.

I've included the link to this article below. Unfortunately I couldn't find a direct link between overeating and bacterial overgrowth, as it relates to humans. However overeating is implicated in IBS, SIBO and GERD. We tend to think we overeat simply because eating is pleasurable and therefore addictive. Bacteria have a role to play in this as well.

Different bacterial families feed on different things. A bacteria that feeds mainly on sugar, starch and refined carbohydrate has the potential to cause food cravings and overeating. Bacteria are manipulative and can influence your diet by altering neural signals in the vagus nerve in the gut. They basically hijack your nervous system. Bacteria can change taste receptors and produce chemicals such as dopamine and serotonin that make us feel good when we eat the foods they eat, and make us feel bad when we don't.

Bacteria can also deliver the hormone norepinephrine to the nervous system which spurs excessive eating. The more you eat, the more potential for excess carbohydrate to escape digestion in the colon, feeding bacteria. This reinforces the neural signalling strategy of the bacteria, which in turn encourages more overeating. It's a vicious cycle.

Gut flora manipulates our eating not only so bacteria grow and thrive, but also to wipe out other bacterial competitors.

Most studies on bacteria and its effect on the human mind involve animals, not humans. One interesting experiment on mice showed that mice fed on a healthy diet had a predominantly healthy bacteria, so the harmful bacteria wasn't able to take hold. However for those fed on an unhealthy diet the bad bacteria was able to take over and thrived.

Diet can affect microbiome change, anywhere from 2 minutes to 24 hours, as bacteria are generally short-lived.

Bacteria could be considered to be intelligent, and have the ability to make conscious decisions. Bacteria "think" by way of their receptors which affects how they move and how they sense their surroundings. Some bacteria are "smarter" than others. EColi has only 5 receptors whereas Azospirillum has 48.

The below link is a very good study on the way in which bacteria affect the human mind:

Is eating behaviour manipulated by the gastrointestinal microbiota?

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201400071/full

Other interesting links:

Overeating disease in lambs

http://ag.ansc.purdue.edu/sheep/ansc442/Semprojs/overeating/overeating_disease_in_sheep2.htm

Bacteria are more capable of complex decision making than thought

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100114143310.htm


----------

