Spread the Wellness

In today’s world approximately 39% of adults are struggling with obesity. Everyone knows that healthy eating and an active lifestyle are two effective approaches to weight loss. But did you know, your gut microbiome plays a significant role in losing weight along with diet and lifestyle changes? In this article we will unfold the role of gut microbiota in weight loss and weight.

Gut Microbiome And Obesity
  • Many researchers are found that the gut microbial composition is different in obese and lean person.
  • Obese people who consume a lot of saturated fat, tend to have less bacterial diversity in the overall gut and have more Firmicutes, which are more into absorbing calories from food, and not good for fat and glucose metabolism.
  • In obese people, the number of Bacteroidetes becomes very less than the leaner individuals. Bacteroidetes are beneficial bacteria present in the gut and produce short-chain fatty acids (like butyrate) that reduce the level of inflammation and lower obesity.
How Does The GUT Health Affects Weight

For a healthy individual, it is crucial to have ample bacterial diversity, because a few or a particular type of bacterial growth can affect the individual’s health, on the other hand, in a gut with bacterial diversity, no single strain is strong enough to overpower your health.

Factors That affects an Individual’s Weight

Bacterial diversity in gut microbes plays a crucial part in various factors that affect an individual’s weight, that includes:

Food Craving
  • Did you ever notice your food cravings, the time you have the urge to have ice-cream or chocolate or, pizza or some salty spicy snacks. Have you ever thought, about where this craving come from? and the answer is from your gut.
  • According to recent studies, having only a few kinds of bacteria in your gut gives them more power to influence and send signals to the brain that encourage the unhealthy food they want. So from next time, notice your craving, because an unhealthy microbiome might be the reason behind your cravings.
  • On the other hand, a diverse gut microbiome, all the strains are equally strong, and they can not influence the host behaviours.
Hormones
  • Recent studies show that your gut microbiome plays an important role in the endocrine system.
  • It works like a conductor of a musical concert. The gut microbiome affects the appetite and controls your weight.
  • The Human body produces a various hormone that affects appetite, including leptin, ghrelin, peptide YY (PYY).
  • Gut microbiome influences leptin, a hormone that sends a signal of fullness to the brain and control caloric expenditure.
  • Studies have shown that taking propionate 24 weeks, increased PYY and GLP-1 hormone levels, which influence hunger. It is found that it also helped to lower the food intake and reduced weight gain.
Metabolic Effect
  • Intestinal microbes not only affects the amount of food we eat but may also control the caloric expenditure from the food we eat.
  • It has been shown through the research, that the gut microbiome can influence nutrient absorption, cardiovascular risk, autoimmune disease, and also our emotions.
  • In the gut, a reduced level of Bacteroidetes increased caloric intake from the diet, which is equal to 5% of total daily energy intake.
  • Some specific microbes like the bacteria Akkermansia muciniphila is responsible for reducing obesity, diabetes and other metabolic disorders.
  • Likewise higher concentration of Akkermansia muciniphila in the gut increases fatty acid oxidation in adipose tissue and and helps in maintaining a healthy weight.
Guidelines to Boost Gut Health and Weight Loss

The key is to increase and diversify your gut-friendly microbiome is to consume a variety of high-fiber, plant-based foods, with probiotic like fermented foods.

Here we are sharing some suggestions to help your good bacteria flourish:

Include Some Fermented Food In Your Diet

Fermented food, such as yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut and, kombucha contains beneficial bacteria like lactobacilli. It helps in improving gut health and increase digestion.

Increase Your Fiber Intake

Including more soluble fiber-rich food, can help to reduce body fat by lower your craving and appetite and keeping your gut bacteria healthy.

When good bacteria in the gut feed on fiber, they produce short-chain fatty acids, that are absorbed by the blood and reduce inflammation and enhance the immune system.

Eliminate High Fat Processed Food From Your Diet

Healthy fat like omega-3, increase beneficial bacteria Bacteroidetes, whereas trans fat and high sugar diet enhanced the growth of bad bacteria like Fermicutes.

Eat Polyphenol Rich Food

Polyphenol is found in plant based food and is responsible to promote the growth of good bacteria. Food like green tea, chocolate, grapes, cranberries are having polyphenol.

Rainbow fruits and vegetables are considered to have a good amount of polyphenol.

Eat More Fruits and Vegetables

Include all the colourful fruits and vegetables in your diet as they are rich in fibers and increase the number of good bacteria and helps in maintaining a healthy weight.

Probiotic
  • Multi strain probiotic and probiotic-rich food such as fermented food provides numerous health benefits to their host. Weight loss is one of them.
  • Certain strains of the Lactobacillus family have been shown to reduce weight, some are:

L. reuteri ATCC PTA 6475
 L. reuteri DSM 17938
 L. gasseri BNR17

  • You can also opt for a probiotic supplement that has the specific strains for weight loss, for instance Biothin and BioGaia are the example of the probotic supplements that have multiple strains for weight loss.
Eat Prebiotic regularly

Consuming prebiotic every day helps in reduce storage fat (lipogenesis) and increased satiety after eating. Add multiple sources like inulin, FOS, acacia senegal, gaur gum, pectin etc

Bottom Line

The Human body contains trillions of bacteria that affect health in many ways such as the feeling of hunger and fullness, how fat is stored and how digestion happened.

Your diet is the most important factor, when people switch to lots of colourful fruits and vegetables, prebiotic, high fiber and fermented food it enhances the level of Bacteroidetes (good bacteria) and reduced the level of Firmicutes (bad bacteria), making it easier to lose weight and maintain a healthy weight.