Fashions in diets come and go, but one thing remains constant: Your gut, or digestive tract, needs the right kind of bacteria to properly break down and digest the food you eat.
A poor-quality diet — a diet heavy in sugar and fatty grease — may be responsible for altering your internal flora, making it weaker and unable to do its job. As a result, people are gaining weight and fat (especially the heart-deadly visceral fat) and getting ill. Digestion is weak, the intestinal walls are not protecting against unwanted matter, and the immune system is compromised.
Defining Probiotics
The term “probiotic” is used so freely these days that some people might not know that most foods don’t contain them. Probiotics are nutritional supplements that boost good digestive bacteria in the gut. Along with poor diets, genetically modified foods (GMOs) and stress have led to a weakening of the digestive tract. Because of that, essential elements are not being taken out of food and absorbed into the bloodstream. As a result, candida (intestinal yeast), visceral fat and other issues cause serious problems.
However, a diet high in foods that encourage a healthy digestive environment, instead of those that derail it, can help feed and expand the good (or pro) biotics (bacteria) in the gut. Dietary probiotic supplements, which generally consist of hundreds of billions of freeze-dried bacteria, are indeed a good way to build those good bacteria back up in the gut, as research indicates.
Probiotic Weight-Loss Study
A new study, published in the British Journal of Nutrition (BJN), shows you can lose weight by correcting internal flora (bacteria), even without dieting. In other words, when the digestive tract works properly and is home to healthy probiotics, it can break down foods, properly move out waste and, thus, maintain weight. However, many of us eat such bad diets containing foods from unnatural sources that the gut flora has changed to less favorable — and less beneficial — types of microorganisms.
Scientists jointly working together from Universite Laval in Quebec and Nestle Corporation tested the hypothesis of the weight-loss effect of probiotics on obese men and women. Specifically, they tested the Nestle specific strain called Lactobacillus rhamnosus, a type commonly found in European yogurt. Results published in the BJN showed an “effect of supplementation on weight loss and maintenance in obese men and women.”
In this experiment, 125 obese men and women were gathered for the study lasting about six months. The study of the effects of probiotics on weight loss was performed during the first 12 weeks.
Amazing Weight Loss
The study clearly shows that women who took probiotics lost nearly twice as much weight over 24 weeks as women who did not. Researchers also found that there is a difference in the intestinal bacteria found in obese people and the flora found in skinnier people. The appetite-regulating hormone known as leptin was also at different levels among the groups.
Researchers speculate that the probiotics might be acting to change the permeability of the intestinal wall, in effect keeping pro-inflammatory molecules out of the bloodstream. It is thought that pro-inflammatory molecules are can initiate weight gain and diabetes by making you more vulnerable to glucose intolerance and metabolic syndrome.
During this study, the positive weight-loss results, interestingly, appeared only in women. The male subjects who took probiotics did not lose more weight than men who did not take probiotics. The Canadian researchers theorized that the dose of probiotics they used was too small for men. But they were not certain why the men did not benefit.
Best Foods For Healthy Gut Flora
While taking probiotic supplements is beneficial, there is nothing like changing one’s diet and eating more foods that help create a better digestive environment on their own. There really are no “probiotic” foods, only foods with bacteria that help the human digestive tract. Most of these foods are cultured (like dairy products) or fermented (like cabbages).
The website Sprouts.com offers up a helpful overview of the healthiest natural foods that offer good bacterial (probiotic) support.
Sprouts.com explains the specifics about these foods:
- Live-cultured yogurt.
- Fermented kefir.
- Sauerkraut.
- Kimchi.
- Kombucha.
- Goat’s milk.
- Miso.
- Tempeh.
- Organic dark chocolate.
A note of caution when you purchase foods that say they contain probiotics: They must state clearly that they contain “live active cultures” (or similar wording) to be of value. If the food item is heated to an excessive degree (which is the case with many packaged foods), the bacteria are dead. Only alive bacteria can be helpful.
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