antibiotics and obesity

Could antibiotics be causing the obesity epidemic?

By Laura Shin | August 27, 2012, 3:00 AM PDT

Yikes. The very medicines we turn to for a cure may be causing us harm.

Two new studies show that antibiotics could be harming the bacteria in our guts, causing us to pack on the pounds. And the hypothesis isn’t so far-fetched, considering that the cattle and pigs we raise as meat are fed a steady stream of antibiotics that have been shown to help them gain weight.

In the first study, which was conducted in mice, exposure to antibiotics disrupted the mice’s internal microbe communities, resulting in changes in the way the mice’s bodies could process food and regulate metabolism./.../