"Smoking is harmful to health", this is a warning printed on the cigarette packaging, indicating that cigarettes are harmful to health, has been a consensus of a concept, for smokers, if you can successfully quit smoking, you can reduce the multi-faceted health hazards caused by smoking, improve the level of physical health, but some friends are never willing to quit smoking, and they also have their own real reasons.
The reason why many friends are reluctant to quit smoking is: "You will get fat after quitting smoking!" This is not a far-fetched excuse, but a phenomenon that is also supported by scientific evidence, and relevant studies have proved that in the 6 to 12 months after quitting smoking, the average weight of ex-smokers will increase by 4.5 kg, while about 13% of ex-smokers can gain more than 10 kg, even if attention is paid to limiting calorie intake, this phenomenon still exists.
Fating will also bring health risks, but also affect people's external beauty, therefore, this has become the only "bad" in addition to the many health benefits brought about by smoking cessation, and getting fat after quitting smoking has also become one of the important reasons why many friends have relapsed in the process of quitting smoking.
Why do many people experience weight gain after quitting smoking? An important research result recently published in the authoritative journal Nature may reveal its secrets. The study found that the weight gain after quitting smoking was originally related to the change of intestinal flora before and after quitting smoking, and it can be said that gaining weight after quitting smoking turned out to be a "prank" of the intestinal flora.
The new study found intestinal cues of weight gain after quitting smoking
For the physiological causes of weight gain after quitting smoking, has not been particularly clear, the mainstream scientific view is that the nicotine in tobacco will stimulate ahexagonal neurons and acetylcholine receptors in the hypothalamus that inhibit appetite neurons, which in turn inhibits the intake of food, resulting in a decrease in the appetite of smokers, which leads to a decrease in the appetite of smokers, which leads to a corollary that the weight gain of ex-smokers is due to the decrease in the activity of hypothalamic neurons after quitting smoking, and may also promote the activity of promoting eating circuits in the brain. Thus leading to increased appetite in smokers.
These recent new research results from Israeli scientists seem to propose different physiological mechanisms.
The researchers built a mouse model that replicated the characteristics of weight changes in humans after quitting smoking. Experimental animals gained less weight during exposure to smoke (equivalent to smoking), while after exposure stopped (equivalent to quitting smoking), their weight returned to non-smoking levels. Studies have found that intestinal flora dependence factors can affect weight recovery. Taking antibiotics to fight changes in the gut microbiome reduces weight rebound, suggesting that antibiotics target a bacterium that fights the gut microbiome to contribute to this process. After stopping antibiotic use, the effect of this smoking cessation on mouse body weight lasted for several weeks, and the results were not affected by dietary changes or differences in the mouse's original microbiota obtained from different suppliers.
In the study, the researchers also found that the intestinal flora of mice exposed to smoke produced a richer amount of metabolic molecules compared to the intestinal flora of mice that were not exposed to tobacco smoke, which helped the intestines extract energy from food, thereby promoting weight gain in experimental animals after stopping exposure to cigarette smoke.
Notably, the study also found that the specific molecular mechanisms that cause this weight gain are related to derivatives of common amino acids, glycine, such as dimethylglycine, and N-acetylglycine, in which dimethylglycine increases in concentration after smoking, and this increase is one of the reasons for weight gain after quitting smoking. The researchers also directly increased the weight of mice by supplementing with dimethylglycine, and this change disappeared after antibiotic treatment, which also shows that dimethylglycine is associated with the weight gain brought about by quitting smoking after smoking.
The mechanism of N-acetylglycine is the opposite, in smoking exposure mice and smoking cessation period, the plasma level of this substance is lower, while after antibiotic treatment, N-acetyl glycine levels will rise, and the researchers added N-acetyl glycine to the diet of mice, which can alleviate the weight gain caused by smoking cessation in mice.
Therefore, it can be said that our weight gain after quitting smoking is actually closely related to the change in intestinal flora caused by smoking, and the main reason for the weight gain after quitting smoking is because the intestinal flora has changed due to the influence of smoking when smoking.
Unexpectedly, the study also found that this ability of tobacco smoke to alter the gut microbiota was not related to the amount of nicotine in the smoke. If mice are given nicotine instead of being exposed to cigarette smoke, the effect on the gut microbiota is not reproduced. This finding suggests that the non-nicotine component in tobacco is responsible for reshaping the gut microbiota to enhance energy extraction from food and promote weight gain. Thus, the study also challenged conventional wisdom that acetylcholine receptors in the hypothalamus and other brain sites involved in maintaining energy homeostasis led to cigarettes' effects on appetite, metabolism and weight regulation.
Of course, these studies are mainly animal experiments based on mice, and there are still many problems that need to be solved before these observations can be generalized to humans. For example, studies have compared the gut microbiota of smokers and non-smokers, some studies have shown that the gut microbiota is disturbed, while other studies have found no difference, and the researchers of these new studies also point out that although this effect has been demonstrated in mouse experiments, it is unclear whether this difference is equivalent in human studies.
In addition, the human intestinal microbiota environment varies from person to person and has certain variability, whether the microbial microbiota regulatory dependence observed in the study after smoking cessation is reliable, and more clinical data are needed to prove that to do this, the relevant clinical data can be retrospectively analyzed to assess the effect of the fecal microbiota of smokers and the fecal microbiota of non-smokers on the body weight of subjects.
People most at risk of weight gain after quitting smoking include women, those with low income or poor diet, people with limited physical activity, and heavy smokers. It is therefore worth noting that while studies using simple model systems can shed light on the physiological mechanisms of weight gain associated with smoking cessation, efforts to extend these insights from models to clinical practice should take into account the complex interaction of factors affecting individuals, as well as the behavioral effects associated with lifestyle changes.
All in all, if for the sake of good health, smoking cessation is still very important, for smokers to quit smoking after the weight gain, we can think deeply from the perspective of intestinal flora change, and this change does not occur after quitting smoking, but has quietly begun to change when smoking, and want to reduce the risk of weight gain after quitting smoking, actively control diet, strengthen exercise, are very important, perhaps with the continuous deepening of research, clinically may also be able to take certain intestinal flora improvement measures, To control the weight gain of ex-smokers is also entirely possible.