What If I Don’t Want To Take A Supplement Can I Get Probiotics Anywhere Else
You sure canin fact, it might be better to get your probiotics from food sources. I would always urge people to eat food first,” says Gorinthat way, you’re getting other nutrients too, in addition to probiotic benefits.
Apovian agrees, saying that most probiotic foods are healthy foods and it certainly cant hurt to eat them . Here are a few ways to get probiotics from food:
So How Does Having Many Beneficial Gut Bacteria Affect Your Weight
They can actually affect how different foods are digested and can produce chemicals that support you to feel full. As a result, they can definitely affect your weight.
Since your bacteria line your intestines, the food that you eat comes into direct contact with them. This may affect what nutrients you absorb and how energy is stored in your body.
Image: iStock.
One study examined the gut bacteria in 77 pairs of twins, one of who was obese and one of whom was not. The study found that those who were obese had different gut bacteria than their non-obese twins. In particular, obesity was associated with lower gut bacteria diversity.
Other studies have shown that if the gut bacteria from obese people are put into mice, the mice gain weight. This suggests that gut bacteria could affect weight.
This may be due to the effect of bacteria on the digestion of different foods. For example, humans cant digest fibre, so its not absorbed into your blood, but instead travels to your intestines where certain gut bacteria do the digesting. By digesting fibre, these gut bacteria produce a number of chemicals that benefit gut health and possibly promote weight loss.
Finally, your gut bacteria can influence how dietary fats are absorbed in the intestines, which may affect how fat is stored in the body.
The Right Diet May Improve Your Gut Microbiota And Your Health
Probiotics main claim to fame is enhancing your goodbacteria and keeping you in tip-top health. Even if a supplement wont causethe weight to fall off, should you take one anyway for your gut health?
What researchers do know is this: Healthy diet first,supplement second. A balance of healthy sources of proteins, fats andcarbohydrates is the most important factor in maintaining good gut bacteria. Thefriendly bacteria survive and thrive when fed high-fiber foods.
A low-fiber diet ,though, reduces the number of good bacteria.
Since a low-carb diet doesnt offer enough nutrition for the good bacteria, the gut microbiota blend shifts, and the beneficial ones get depleted. The bad bacteria then begin to take over, says Dr. Cresci.
In one study, researchers found that the bad bacteria consumed the protein and produced byproducts linked to higher rates of colon cancer.
So while the jury is still out on whether probiotics canlead to weight loss, its clear, once again, that a healthy diet is key. Ahigh-fiber diet can help you maintain gut and overall health. For somepeople, a probiotic could work alongside a nutritious diet to shore up guthealth. Talk to your doctor to see if its right for you.
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Probiotics For Weight Loss
Research on probiotics is ongoing, but many studies show a link between probiotics and improving bowel regularity, immune function, inflammation and gastrointestinal symptoms, Cresci says. Theres a possibility probiotics might help with weight loss.
Animal and human studies show that people with obesity have a different microbiome composition than those who are lean, she says. Its believed that adding probiotics to your diet could help correct this difference. Theres just not enough data available yet to fully recommend probiotics for weight loss, Cresci explains.
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But consuming more probiotics improves gut microbiota, and this can help people achieve a healthy body weight, says Ryan Andrews, principal nutritionist and adviser at Precision Nutrition.
This is because of the widespread effects that occur throughout the body originating in our gut including everything from inflammation to insulin sensitivity to digestion to metabolism to mood, he explains. When our digestive system contains healthy amounts of probiotics, this can allow us to better metabolize foods, absorb nutrients, and prevent harmful microbes from colonizing and regulate overall immune function.
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What Science Says About Probiotics And Weight Loss
Kahan says that many studies have found a correlation between good gut bacteria and healthy weight. “In general, heavier patients tend to have more of the unhealthier bacteria, and less of the good, healthier bacteria,” he says. People who are thinner also have a wider range of gut bacteria, possibly indicating the importance of gut diversity to maintaining a healthy weight.
However, Abby Langer, R.D., says experts don’t know whether changes in weight cause differences in gut bacteria or whether it’s the bacteria itself that impacts weight.
“We cannot determine cause and effect,” Langer says to Men’s Health. “We dont know the whole story.”
But there’s still not enough evidence to suggest that taking probiotics can lead to weight loss, in part because there’s a complicating factor at play: we can’t tell whether people with good gut bacteria have it organically, or if it’s a result of their diets.
“When you consider bacteria, you have to consider two sides of the equation: One side is the bacteria in your gut, and the other is the bacteria in your food sources,” Doerfler says. Additionally, Kahan says that most studies looking at the link between gut bacteria and weight loss have assessed animals, not human subjects.
“People who weigh less typically have diets with more plant-based foods, which are good for weight loss and have the benefit of growing good bacteria,” saysDoerfler.
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How Gut Bacteria Help You Lose Weight
Many of the bacteria that live in your digestive system help your body perform functions it could necessarily carry out on its own, including producing certain B vitamins and certain fatty acids.
They also help break down fiber, which your body cant digest, turning it into beneficial short-chain fatty acids like butyrate
Probiotics seem to influence appetite and energy usage via the production of short-chain fatty acids like butyrate. When the good bacteria digest starches, they produce butyrate. This decreases insulin resistance and regulates the hormones that control appetite .
So, if you dont have enough of these bacteria, then you might not get the signal that you are full, prompting you to consume more calories which contribute to weight gain.
Its also thought that certain probiotics may inhibit the absorption of dietary fat, increasing the amount of fat excreted with feces. In other words, some bacteria extract fewer calories from the foods you eat. Certain bacteria, such as those from the Lactobacillus family, have been found to function in this way.
Probiotics To Suppress Appetite And Cravings
In a study in 2013 at the National Institutes of Health, Maryland USA, probiotics were found to effectively treat obesity and weight gain in mice by promoting the release of GLP-1 a hormone that encourages the release of insulin and promotes the feeling of satiety to reduce over consumption. Increased levels of GLP-1 are also thought to help burn calories and fat .
Meanwhile In study published in the british-journal-of-nutrition investigated the impact of a Lactobacillus rhamnosus on weight loss in both men and women . The study a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomised trial, found that the probiotic taken over a 24 week period helped the Women in the study lose body weight and fat mass together with the appetite-regulating hormone leptin. However the probiotic was not found to have any beneficial effect on the men in the study.
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Probiotics Help You Store Less Fat
Angiopoietin-like 4 is a protein that regulates the accumulation of triglycerides in fatty tissue.
In one study, a group of mice that was given Lactobacillus paracasei had higher levels of circulating ANGPTL4.
This led to reduced fat storage .
In a proposed study, Bifidobacterium longum was linked to increased levels of ANGPTL4 .pdf” rel=”nofollow”> 28).
Both Lactobacillus paracasei and Bifidobacterium longum are contained in the 8-strain probiotic formulation VSL#3.
Studies show that low bifidobacterium numbers can predispose children for obesity .
Patients with diabetes also exhibit lower numbers of this type of bacteria .
KEY POINT: ANGPTL4 reduces fat mass, prevents fat from being stored and promotes fat burning.
Because this protein is reactive to the intestinal environment, increasing ANGPTL4 through probiotic consumption can help decrease fat storage.
Which Probiotics Help You Lose More Belly Fat
Probiotics are tiny, living organisms that inhabit your digestive system. And having the right kind of probiotics in your gut may actually be able to help regulate weight and metabolism. Several studies show that certain types of probiotics might be able to help you lose weightespecially belly fat.
Which probiotics are the most effective for weight loss? And how does gut bacteria actually influence weight and metabolism? Keep reading to learn why probiotics are a healthy guts best friend, and why thats crucial for healthy weight loss.
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Body Weight Is Affected By Gut Bacteria
Two types of probiotics in the intestines, Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes, play a role in regulating body weight .
Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes make up 90 percent of the anaerobic bacteria in the intestines .
Obesity is essentially caused by taking in too many calories without burning them for energy.
Some people may be predisposed to obesity because of their gut flora, however .
Studies that have been conducted on humans as well as animals have determined that lean individuals have a different intestinal ecology than overweight people .
Basically, the flora in overweight people is more efficient at extracting and storing energy from their diets.
One study found that obese mice had diminished levels of Bacteroidetes and raised levels of Firmicutes compared with normal-weight mice .
This altered bacterial ecosystem develops after the mouse becomes obese. It is not necessarily a factor in the cause of obesity.
It is somewhat unclear exactly how the change in the balance of bacteria affects the use and storage of calories.
If body weight is affected by gut bacteria, can you influence body weight by changing the gut bacteria?
Some researchers have found that when intestinal bacteria from obese mice are transferred to lean mice, the lean mice gain weight .
This raises the possibility of whether humans can change their disposition for obesity by altering their probiotic composition.
Well look at some human studies later, read on…
Probiotics Can Help Enhance Your Gut
“Probiotics can help you lose weight by improving your gut health,” say registered dietitian nutritionists Lyssie Lakatos, RDN, CDN, CFT & Tammy Lakatos Shames, RDN, CDN, CFT, The Nutrition Twins, and co-founders of the 21-Day Body Reboot. “An unhealthy digestive system leads to an imbalance of gut microbes, and research has suggested that this imbalance could contribute to obesity.” Of course, before starting a new probiotics regime, always consult with your doctor or nutritionist.
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The Link Between Probiotics And Body Weight
Although there is still uncertainty on how probiotics affect our body weight, two recent studies indicate that there is a connection. The first study, published in 2018, asks: “Is It Time to Use Probiotics to Prevent or Treat Obesity?” and goes on to examine the link between gut health and obesity or the conditions that lead up to it, including weight gain, such high blood sugar, metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance.
The authors state: “Several studies have shown that in individuals with obesity, the gut microbiota composition can be significantly different from that of lean individuals,” and they posit that your gut ” bacteria can exert a fundamental role in modulating energy metabolism,” and pose “that modifications of gut microbiota composition can be associated with increases or reductions of body weight and body mass index. Based on this evidence, manipulation of the gut microbiota with probiotics has been considered a possible method to prevent and treat obesity.”
A subsequent study in 2019 in the British Medical Journal, examined the effect of “oral intake of bacterial probiotics on 15 variables related to obesity, diabetes, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.” The analysis found that “probiotics consumption improves anthropometric parameters and BMI,” as well as improving blood sugar, chronic inflammation, and triglyceride levels in the blood, as well as liver function.
Risk Of Adverse Reactions
If youre allergic and intolerant to many foods, then its wise to read the labels of any probiotic supplements you buy carefully. Some of these supplements may contain common allergens such as dairy, soy, and eggs. Such supplements should be avoided by anyone with allergies since they may trigger allergic reactions .
In the same vein, if you are allergic to yeast, consider taking bacteria-based probiotics instead of yeast-based ones .
You arent lucky either if you are lactose intolerant. For one, lactose is one of the ingredients in these supplements . You may increase bloating and flatulence if you take lactose-containing probiotics. Therefore, its best to choose lactose-free options instead.
Whats more, some probiotic supplements contain prebiotics. These are simple plant fibers that the bacteria use as food, but you cannot digest them. The most common prebiotic is lactulose . When a supplement contains both a prebiotic and a probiotic, it is referred to as a synbiotic .
Some individuals may experience flatulence and bloating when they consume synbiotics.
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Probiotics Are Friendly Bacteria
The microorganisms in your gut help you digest foods, absorb nutrients, gain energy and stay healthy.
The complex balance of intestinal bacteria can fluctuate. The microorganism composition changes throughout your life .
Many of these microorganisms are beneficial bacteria.
The bacteria live off of compounds that come from our diet, and they provide us with health benefits.
They even help the body produce vitamins B and K .
Probiotics help to ferment some of the short-chain fatty acids that are found in carbohydrates.
A large percentage of these make it through the upper intestine undigested.
The bacteria in the lower intestine help ferment these types of carbohydrates, creating usable nutrients and waste byproducts .
Without probiotics in our guts, we wouldnt be able to digest certain fibers and absorb nutrients and calories from them .
KEY POINT: There are trillions of microorganisms in the gut.
Most of them are bacteria that convert otherwise indigestible food into nutrients and energy.
Probiotics For Weight Loss: Evidence Mounts
Exactly how probiotics may encourage weight loss is not 100 percent clear, but the evidence is building. There are a lot of bits and pieces of preliminary evidence that our gut biome and by extension, manipulating it by way of probiotics, may have a positive effect on weight management, says Scott Kahan, MD, the director of the National Center for Weight and Wellness in Washington, DC. In one interesting mouse study, animals underwent weight-loss surgery or a sham procedure, and as expected, the mice who had the real surgery lost weight. But then the researchers transplanted bacteria from the gut of the weight-loss surgery group into the guts of mice that didntand then they lost weight too! In a few years, we will know a lot more about the gut microbiome and how to manipulate it with probiotics for weight loss, predicts Dr. Kahan.
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Can Probiotics Really Help You Lose Weight
Taking for your gut health is one thing. But can these teeny-tiny found in dietary and fermented foodshelp you lose weight, too? They do live in your stomach, after all.
Probiotics are live microorganisms that naturally live in your body already, according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health .
Probiotics are substances that encourage the growth of bacteria, specifically beneficial bacteria, that help to keep intestinal health in balance, says Frances Largeman-Roth, R.D.N., author of Eating in Color. A healthy balance of good bacteria in the body may help regulate weight and ward off a range of health issues.
Those other health issues include digestive problems like irritable bowel syndrome , along with allergic skin diseases like atopic dermatitis, and even the common cold, per the NCCIH.
The 5 Best Probiotic Supplements For Weight Loss
When it comes to buying a quality probiotic supplement, don’t skimp. Always look for those that conduct third-party testing and have trusted quality, efficacy, and purity. “Probiotics have to be alive for them to work, so inexpensive, low-quality supplements, especially when it comes to probiotics, are not worth taking,” says Foroutan.
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Make Sure There Is Proper Packaging
While you dont need to purchase only refrigerated probiotics, make sure the packaging is well sealed. Its also essential that the packaging is dark to protect from light damage.
We have our own brand of Probiotics here at Avocadu called Gut-13.
Our specially formulated probiotic supplement contains:
- 50 Billion CFUs Per Serving
- 13 Different Gut Healing Strains
- Delayed Release for Deeper Support
- Made in the USA
You can read more about it and why its so important for not only gut health but overall health on our probiotics page.
Certain Probiotics Can Help You Avoid Gaining Weight In The First Place
In addition to helping you lose fat, certain types of probiotics can even prevent you from gaining weight and accumulating fat .
Preventing weight gain is more effective at combating obesity than losing weight once youve put it on.
If you are eating more than you should, you can reduce the amount of weight and fat that you gain by taking probiotics.
A 4-week study on humans, found that supplementing with VSL#3 while increasing ones calorie intake by 1000 kcal per day gained less weight and fat than those that didnt.
It appears that VSL#3 provided protection against weight and fat gain in healthy young men consuming a high-energy diet .
VSL#3 Probiotic Weight Gain vs Placebo
VSL#3 Probiotic Fat Gain vs Placebo
This shows that some strains of friendly bacteria can help you maintain your weight even if your diet is not ideal.
However, that doesnt mean that its healthy to eat fast food every day just because youre taking probiotics.
KEY POINT: Some types of probiotics can negate the weight and fat gaining effects of a higher calorie diet.
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