Researchers trying to figure out if microbes living in your body might be a factor in weight gain say a breath test could show if you’re loaded with greedy germs that pull every last calorie out of food.

Study after study is showing that people are covered in bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms that help digest food, that can keep teeth healthy and even that cause dandruff. And they’re finding that the types of microbes living in the colon and intestines may play a major role in just how much nutrition the body gets out of food.

“Normally, the collection of microorganisms living in the digestive tract is balanced and benefits humans by helping them convert food into energy,” says Dr. Ruchi Mathur, an endocrinologist at at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Mathur and colleagues were looking at a species of bacteria called Methanobrevibacter smithii – M. smithii for short. As its name indicates, it makes a lot of methane – the odorless gas responsible for burps and other inconvenient emissions.

People who produced the most methane and another gas, hydrogen, in their breath weighed more and had more body fat than people who produced the lowest amounts, they reported in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

“This is the first large-scale human study to connect the dots and show an association between gas production and body weight,” Mathur said in a statement.

The team tested 792 volunteers, dividing them into four groups – those with “normal” levels of gases in their breath, those who had more methane than average, those who breathed out more hydrogen than average and those who produced extra amounts of both methane and hydrogen.

Those in the last group, exuding the highest concentrations of both hydrogen and methane, also had higher body mass indexes or BMI, the standard measure of height to weight that doctors use to determine obesity. They also had more body fat than the others.

This fits in with other work Mathur’s team has done on the role of this particular bug in obesity, they noted. For one, obese people with more methane detectable in their breath weighed nearly 15 pounds more than other obese people who didn’t produce as much methane.

M. smithii needs hydrogen, and it gets it from other bacteria living in the gut, which produce hydrogen gas as a byproduct of metabolizing food.  The researchers are not entirely sure how a methane-producing bug might make people fatter, but said it’s possible methane gas slows the passage of food through the intestines and colon, allowing more calories to be extracted.

Diet could affect this, and the researchers didn’t ask their volunteers for details about what they ate. “However, given the large sample size, these individual variations may be mitigated between groups,” they wrote.

Researchers are trying to figure out if it’s possible to kill off the guilty germ and help people lose weight. But they know better than to just kill gut bacteria willy-nilly – studies have shown that taking antibiotics can alter the balance of microbes in a bad way, causing stomach upset, allowing deadly infections such as C. difficile to take hold and, perhaps, even allowing a takeover by the obesity-generating germs.

Related:

• Are your gut bacteria in charge?
• Overweight? Blame the bacteria in your gut
• Antibiotics may raise obesity risk

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By MyHealthNewsDaily staff

If your job is a literal pain in the neck, drinking coffee may help, a new study from Norway says.

People who drank coffee before sitting down to work at a computer for 90 minutes reported less pain in their necks and shoulders than those who didn't drink coffee, according to the study. Some in the study had previously suffered chronic neck and shoulder pain, while other participants hadn't — but people in both groups who drank coffee reported less pain, the researchers said.

Among people whose daily work involves low levels of muscle activity, such as sitting at a computer all day, about 10 percent report shoulder and neck pain, according to the study.

The researchers looked at 48 people, including 22 with chronic neck or shoulder pain, and 26 healthy people. The experiment was part of research on how pain develops during office work; it was not  intended to look at the effects of caffeine, the researchers said.

People in the study reported to the laboratory first thing in the morning, so to offset any effects of sleepiness, coffee and tea were available. Nineteen of the study participants chose to drink coffee, but were instructed not to drink more than one cup. 

Then, for 90 minutes, participants performed a computer task, using only a mouse.

Researchers found that people who drank coffee — whether they had previous chronic pain or not — developed less pain over the course of the 90 minutes, compared with those who didn't drink coffee. And at the end of the computer task, the coffee drinkers rated their pain as less intense than the other study participants. 

It's possible the reduction in pain experienced by coffee drinkers in the study was due to other traits or lifestyle behaviors common to people in this group. Future studies should be conducted in which participants are randomly assigned to consume caffeine or not in order to better understand whether the caffeine itself is truly reducing pain, the researchers said.

The study, conducted by researchers at the Sunnaas Rehabilitation Hospital in Norway, was published Sept. 3 in the journal BMC Research Notes.

More from MyHealthNewsDaily:

• Coffee's Perks: Studies Find 5 Health Benefits
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When the American Licorice Company announced on Wednesday it was voluntarily recalling its black licorice Red Vines because of high levels of lead, about half the country paused and thought, “Wait, people eat black licorice?” The other half (presumably mostly curmudgeonly grandfathers and uncles) became disappointed to learn it would be harder than ever to find the sweet treat.

Licorice, which comes from the root of Glycyrrhiza glabra plant, flavors what we call black licorice (which is redundant), liqueurs such as Jagermeister, and medicines such as NyQuil, which relies on the pungent flavor to mask the medicinal taste. Even though it commonly appears in products, licorice seems polarizing.

“People either love it or hate it and, as far as I can tell, it’s not a learned like or dislike,” says Marcia Pelchat, an associate member of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, a nonprofit center, which researches taste and smell.  

“I don’t know a specific gene that is associated with liking and disliking licorice. [But] it does seem to be something that people are born with.”

While experts haven’t conducted much research on licorice preference, Pelchat — who dislikes the flavor but is married to a lover of licorice — shares a few theories as to why licorice divides us between the lovers and the haters.

When we eat, we use both the sense of taste and smell to detect flavor. Taste includes sweet, bitter, salty and sour. When we bite into a piece of licorice, we taste glycyrrhizin, a natural sweetener in licorice root, which can taste, to some, like saccharin, the artificial sweetener found in Sweet 'n' Low. With licorice, this sickly sweet lingers, causing some to wrinkle their noses in displeasure.

“What this suggests to me is maybe liking and disliking licorice is related to liking and disliking saccharin,” Pelchat says.

Licorice also contains anethole, which is aromatic and plays on our olfactory sense. Anethole also occurs in anise and fennel, both of which licorice haters might find more tolerable. (Anise and fennel flavor absinthe, for anyone who thought it, too, might be a licorice liqueur.)

“[Taste] seems to be built-in; it doesn’t require any learning,” she explains, adding that people can train themselves to like spicy foods, or even cilantro. “However, responses to smells seem to be learned.”

While this means people might dislike licorice because it reminds them of the smell of NyQuil, or another malodorous memory, Pelchat suspects that it’s really the taste, not the smell that turns people off.

“There are lots and lots of genes involved in the perception of [flavor] and of aroma and we probably all have relatively unique sensory worlds. So that’s just something to keep in mind in talking about individual differences in preference.”

Related:

• Red Vines black licorice recalled over high lead levels
• Who hates cilantro? Study aims to find out
• Cilantro haters are mutants

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Seth Wenig / AP file

Self-control is a limited commodity that runs low as you use it. So once your pool dries up, you'll struggle when faced with temptation, finds a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Researchers asked 16 people to perform self-control tasks while being monitored by an fMRI scanner. During the first session, people were assigned to either a demanding mental task or easier task. Two weeks later, they swapped tasks.

The results: Brain scans from the first session showed promising activity in both the participants' anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)--an area that deals with decision-making--and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), an area that helps manage self-control.

But after the second session, those who were exposed to the demanding task first showed less activity in their DFPFC. Simply put, "if you exert a significant amount of self-control at one time, you'll have a hard time exerting it later," says lead study author William Hedgcock, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the University of Iowa.

Let's say you're sitting in front of a plate of brownies at work, but you resist because you're on a diet. Hedgcock's research shows the next time you're faced with sweets--whether it's later tonight or two days from now--you'll be more likely to cave. Why? Hedgcock believes it's because your self-control is like a muscle: If you use it extensively in the short term, it will wear out and become exhausted. And time is really the only thing that helps it recover.

To prevent your self-control engine from running out of fuel, use your resources more wisely, or make less drastic choices, says Hedgcock. That's easier said than done, but here's an example: If you're on a diet but still craving something sweet, opt for a smoothie over a large sundae, rather than caving or withholding completely.

That way, you satisfy your craving and exercise some self-control, but also refrain from overworking it, says Hedgcock. (For more tips on keeping your mind sharp, discover 27 Ways to Power Up Your Brain.)

More from Men's Health:

• The Simplest Way to Resist Fast-Food Cravings
• Outsmart Your Willpower
• 4 Sneaky Portion-Control Tricks
• Win the War Against Snacking
• Sign up for the Men's Health Daily Dose newsletter for must-have tips in your inbox every single day!

Con Poulos

Photos of chocolate cake and other sugary treats made regions of the brain known to be involved in appetite control light up, according to a new study.

Just glancing at a photo of a rich and gooey chocolate cake can set your brain circuits sparking, switching on cravings and revving up your appetite, a new study shows.

The proof is in the brain scans. Researchers found that when people stare at sugary treats, regions of the brain known to be involved in appetite control and pleasure and reward light up, according to the study presented at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society.

The new study parallels earlier research in cocaine addicts. When addicts were shown anti-drug commercials that included crossed-out needles, the brain regions associated with pleasure fired up and the addicts reported increased craving. Contrary to public health officials’ plans, only the needles registered in the addicts’ brains, not the big red Xs crossing them out.

“We see parallels between substances of abuse, like cocaine, and highly palatable foods,” said the study’s lead author Dr. Kathleen Page, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California. “Some of the same brain regions light up.”

Page and her colleagues scanned 13 obese Hispanic women looking at images of alluring foods such as cupcakes, chocolate cake and chocolate chip cookies.

“What we saw was that the regions of the brain that are involved in reward and hunger lit up,” Page said.

The women, who were also asked to rate their appetite at the beginning and end of the experiment, reported greater hunger and desire for food after looking at the photos.

And in an intriguing second experiment, the researchers asked the women to each consume a sugary drink of approximately 200 calories. Then the researchers repeated the scans as before with the women looking at photos of tasty treats.

“Surprisingly, consumption of the sugar drink — which was essentially equivalent to a 16-ounce soda — actually increased the ratings of hunger and desire,” Page said. “We didn’t predict a hunger increase with the sugar drink. Apparently the brain saw it as an appetizer.”

It’s not clear how average people can protect themselves from photos of tempting treats, Page said. “It’s funny, but when I conducted the studies and looked at the pictures myself, I was thinking, ‘I could eat a piece of chocolate cake right now.’”

It is possible that there could be some sort of public health response, Page said. “You’re probably aware that Disney has said that in 2015 it will stop showing food and beverage ads on their children’s TV shows,” she said. “There have been behavioral studies showing that that the more children see these ads, the more they eat.”

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If you can't stomach the thought of guzzling down eight glasses of water every single day, here's some good news: You're off the hook, more health experts are saying. 

A new editorial in an Australian public health journal is the latest to bust the widely-repeated health myth we need to guzzle 64 ounces, or eight 8-ounce glasses, of water each day just to stave off dehydration. Actually, we get enough fluids to keep our bodies adequately hydrated from the foods we eat and the beverages we drink -- even from caffeinated drinks like coffee and tea. 

Turns out, the whole "eight glasses a day" thing "really is no longer the recommendation; the recommendation is drinking to thirst," explains Madelyn Fernstrom, a board-certified nutrition specialist and TODAY's diet and nutrition editor. Drink when you're thirsty! What a novel idea.

It's not a bad idea to consume 64 ounces of fluid a day, but it's not a scientifically proven idea, either. It likely comes from a 1940s recommendation from the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council, which said that adults should ingest about 2.5 liters of water a day. 

"But the often ignored second half of that statement pointed out that most of the water you need is in the foods you eat," explains Dr. Aaron Carroll, associate professor of Pediatrics and the associate director of Children's Health Services Research at Indiana University School.

"But that report wasn’t based on any solid evidence – it was just opinion," continues Carroll, who explored the waterlogged myth in the book "Don't Cross Your Eyes ... They'll Get Stuck That Way!", which he co-authored with Dr. Rachel Vreeman, assistant professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine. "A number of years later, a famous nutritionist, Dr. Frederick Stare, said something similar about drinking eight glasses of water a day, but he, too, stated that it could be in the form of coffee, tea, milk, soft drinks, or even beer. He even said that fruits and vegetables are good sources of water."

But doesn't gulping down water help with weight loss? Kind of: It's true that drinking a high volume of water has been shown to work as an appetite suppressant, but consuming foods with high water content -- like watermelon, lettuce or grapefruit -- results in more weight loss than eschewing more foods for more (and more and more) water, writes the author of the Australian editorial, Spero Tsindos, of the department of dietetics and human nutrition at La Trobe University in Victoria. We've also heard that drinking lots of water helps ward off kidney stones and UTIs, but studies have shown that's only true for those who are prone to recurring episodes of either condition. 

Last summer, a paper published in the British Medical Journal grabbed headlines when it called the myth "nonsense" -- thoroughly debunked nonsense," for that matter, citing reports in 2002 and 2006 that couldn't find any "clear evidence from drinking increased amounts of water."

Yet the myth sticks around, likely because people have made a lot of money off the idea that we're all on the precipice of dehydration. (And we're definitely not -- government research on more than 15,000 people in 50 states show that over three years, the average American ingested 75 ounces of water a day, Carroll points out.)

"(B)ottled water and the entire health culture around drinking more water have been very lucrative," Vreeman explains. "Certainly, your body needs fluids and water is a healthy choice to meet those fluid needs, but many of us spend a lot of money, effort and guilt on forcing ourselves to drink more water than we really need."

So how much water should we be drinking? Whatever your body tells you it needs. Listen to your body, drink when it tells you to, and there's no need to drink more than that. (The idea that "when you're thirsty, you're already dehydrated" is another myth.) 

Fernstrom notes that it's of course better to choose water over sodas, sweetened juices or other sugary, high-calorie beverages. There may not be any evidence that excess water is doing you any good, but it's not likely doing any harm, either. 

"The issue of too much water, that's only a problem for extreme athletes who are sweating profusely and drinking too much water without replacing their salt," Fernstrom explains. For us mere mortals, if you drink lots of water throughout the day, "you're just going to pee it out," she says. "The worst that'll happen is you'll learn where more bathrooms are in your community."

Related: 

• Ask Jenna Wolfe: What's the best way to lose belly fat?
• Does organic food turn people into jerks?

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Vendors offer organically grown produce at the Union Square farmers market in New York City.

Renate Raymond has encountered her fair share of organic food snobs, but a recent trip to a Seattle market left her feeling like she'd stumbled onto the set of "Portlandia."

"I stopped at a market to get a fruit platter for a movie night with friends but I couldn't find one so I asked the produce guy," says the 40-year-old arts administrator from Seattle. "And he was like, 'If you want fruit platters, go to Safeway. We're organic.' I finally bought a small cake and some strawberries and then at the check stand, the guy was like 'You didn't bring your own bag? I need to charge you if you didn't bring your own bag.' It was like a 'Portlandia skit.' They were so snotty and arrogant."

As it turns out, new research has determined that a judgmental attitude may just go hand in hand with exposure to organic foods. In fact, a new study published this week in the journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science, has found that organic food may just make people act a bit like jerks.

"There's a line of research showing that when people can pat themselves on the back for their moral behavior, they can become self-righteous," says author Kendall Eskine, assistant professor of  the department of psychological sciences at Loyola University in New Orleans. "I've noticed a lot of organic foods are marketed with moral terminology, like Honest Tea, and wondered if you exposed people to organic food, if it would make them pat themselves on the back for their moral and environmental choices. I wondered if  they would be more altruistic or not."

To find out, Eskine and his team divided 60 people into three groups. One group was shown pictures of clearly labeled organic food, like apples and spinach. Another group was shown comfort foods such as brownies and cookies. And a third group -- the controls -- were shown non-organic, non-comfort foods like rice, mustard and oatmeal. After viewing the pictures, each person was then asked to read a series of vignettes describing moral transgressions.

"One vignette was about second cousins having sex," says Eskine. "Another was about a lawyer on the prowl in an ER trying to get people to sue for their injuries. Then the groups made moral judgments on a scale from one to seven."

In another phase of the study, the three groups were asked to volunteer for a (fictitious) study, with each person writing down the amount of time -- from zero to 30 minutes -- that they would be willing to volunteer.

The results did not bode well for the organic folks.

"We found that the organic people judged much harder compared to the control or comfort food groups," says Eskine. "On a scale of 1 to 7, the organic people were like 5.5 while the controls were about a 5 and the comfort food people were like a 4.89."

When it came to helping out a needy stranger, the organic people also proved to be more selfish, volunteering only 13 minutes as compared to 19 minutes (for controls) and 24 minutes (for comfort food folks).

"There's something about being exposed to organic food that made them feel better about themselves," says Eskine. "And that made them kind of jerks a little bit, I guess."

Why does eating better make us act worse? Eskine says it probably has to do with what he calls "moral licensing."

"People may feel like they've done their good deed," he says. "That they have permission, or license, to act unethically later on. It's like when you go to the gym and run a few miles and you feel good about yourself, so you eat a candy bar."

Eskine says he was surprised by the findings ("You'd think eating organic would make you feel elevated and want to pay it forward," he says) and hopes to do additional studies that look at conditions that might prompt people to act differently.

Until then, organic eaters may want to rein in those self-righteous stink-eyes.

"At my local grocery, I sometimes catch organic eyes gazing into my grocery cart and scowling," says Sue Frause, a 61-year-old freelance writer/photographer from Whidbey Island. "So I'll often toss in really bad foods just to get them even more riled up."

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Think about steak, eat broccoli. This probably doesn't work for vegetarians.

Do you still act like the kid on the school lunch line who grumbles when he's served a pile of flaccid carrots? Here's a weird trick: Staring at a picture of a T-bone beforehand may make your vegetables more enjoyable, according to a new study in PLoS ONE.

When you view a salivating picture, your orbital frontal cortex, the region of the brain responsible for coding pleasant experiences, lights up and convinces your tongue that the bland food you're eating is tastier than it actually is, explains study author Johannes Le Coutre, Ph.D, head of perception physiology at Nestle Research Center in Switzerland.

We don't expect you to carry around pictures of juicy steaks or blistered pizza, but you can make your own healthy meals look and taste more like caloric feasts. We've recruited food stylist Brian Preston-Campbell, who is also a trained chef, to give us a few tips on how to make the following five health foods more tantalizing.

Related: Takeout That Delivers

1. Broccoli: Salt It
Green vegetables should always be cooked in salted boiling water because it not only seasons the produce, but enhances the color. Then shock them in ice water to halt the cooking process and lock in that emerald beauty.

2. Cauliflower: Add Color
"Steamed white cauliflower is a food stylist's death knell, only made worse when it is paired with steamed chicken breast or baked tilapia in a white butter sauce," says Preston-Campbell. One remedy? Leave some stem on the florets to help to break up the rounded tops of the cauliflower pieces and add a little contrast. Then add some color and texture to the dish with breadcrumbs, herbs, or spices. You can also mix it with colorful vegetables. (Need more great ways to spice up your food? Watch how chef Eddie Huang reinvents junk food.)

3. Yogurt: Strain It
Line a fine mesh strainer with a coffee filter or clean paper towel, and place on top of a bowl to catch the yogurt's liquid. Pour in the yogurt, and drain overnight in the refrigerator. In the morning, you'll be left with a thick, velvety yogurt that can hold a swirled texture (like a spiraling cone of soft serve).

4. Kale: Perfect Its Color
Buy the freshest, most vibrantly green bunch you can find, you want to start with a quality product. Then heavily salt the water to perk up the color and boil for only one or two minutes, just to soften these hardy leaves. Then, saute for about 5 minutes (don't let it brown) with some garlic, pine nuts, bacon or pepper flakes for added color and flavor. Avoid mixing in acids such as vinegar or lemon juice, which will make these leaves wilt in vibrancy and texture. (Start stripping off extra pounds with the newly expanded 2012 edition of Eat This, Not That!)

5. Tilapia: Keep It Moist
Tilapia doesn't look appetizing because it's flat, white, and simply not as exciting as a thick piece of bright red tuna or fresh fillet of salmon. Cooking this fish in a tomato broth will add color and keep the fish moist. Follow Preston-Campbell's recipe: Puree two cored and coarsely chopped tomatoes, the juice of half a lemon, a dash of dried oregano, and a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil in a blender. Salt and pepper to taste. Strain into a saute pan and bring to a simmer. Place the tilapia fillets in the pan and poach the fish (just below a simmer on low heat, don't let it boil!) until they are cooked through, about 8 minutes.

Related: The Best and Worst Foods for Your Cholesterol
Make healthy miso-walnut dressing for a kale salad

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• Cauliflower Power
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• Why room-temperature coffee tastes so bad
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Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

Big bites lead to big bellies, researchers say, and they might have a solution: People take smaller bites of food when it's accompanied by stronger aromas, so infusing foods with strong aromas could get people to eat less.

We take bigger bites of foods we are familiar with and smaller bites of those that require more chewing. Those small bites are a good thing, as they actually make your stomach feel fuller faster, reducing the amount of food eaten and calories taken in, the researchers note.

To see how the smell of a food changes bite size, the researchers designed an interesting eating contraption to separate smell from other factors that affect how big of a bite participants take.

Participants were fed vanilla custard through a tube while "vanilla-custard" smells were delivered directly into the backs of their noses. They controlled the amount of custard fed into their mouth by pressing a button to stop the flow. The researchers weighed the custard cup before and after each "bite" to measure its size. Participants ate about the amount of a normal-size desert. [ 10 Tips for Sticking to Healthy Portions ]

The "back of the nose" presentation mimics the aroma during real eating, said Rene de Wijk, a senior researcher at the Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands: "[these] presentations resemble the situation of normal eating whereby aromas travel from the food in the mouth," he said. "We cannot say whether smells in the room or on the plate have the same effect because we have not tested it."

The researchers found that when food was associated with strong aromas, even of the pleasant natural cream flavoring the researchers used, people took smaller bites.

"Our aroma was a pleasant smelling cream aroma presented at low levels of intensity," de Wijk said. "We have not tested other smells, but believe that effects can be expected when the aroma 'fits' the food, i.e., unusual combinations may not work."

The researchers think this is a feedback loop: when a strong smell is presented in the nose, the participants pared their eating to reduce the amount of flavor they experienced.

The researchers suggest that infusing foods with stronger smells could be used to control portion size: manipulating the odor of food so that it was more fragrant could result in a 5- to 10-percent decrease in food intake per bite. Combining aroma control with portion control could fool the body into thinking it was full with a smaller amount of food, aiding weight loss.

"Aromas added at relatively low levels to the foods may already have the effect," de Wijk said, though they didn't study directly if the individuals actually ate less of the custard in the end.

The study was published Wednesday in the journal Flavour.

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• Can you get addicted to ice cream? Maybe, study shows
• Better fuzzy brain cure: Sip some water
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