I love when I find a treasure in my Inbox! Today, I received an email from a website I follow related to health and nutrition. For obvious reasons, in the past year I have become obsessed with learning all that I can about probiotics and their very important role in our body. I KNOW I feel better since starting Probio5, but I want to UNDERSTAND why!
If you are like me, then your prior experience with probiotics might have been limited to being told to take them after you finish a round of antibiotics. If you are also like me, you went to the health food store, found the most expensive bottle in the refrigerator case, with the biggest number of billions of CFU and came home, put the liquid gold in your refrigerator and pretty much forgot to ever take it. Oops!
I have since learned that as long as your probiotic contains the RIGHT and DIVERSE strains of bacteria (and a very beneficial yeast) that it doesn’t need to be refrigerated, it doesn’t need a gazillion bacteria in it and IT DOES NOT NEED to cost a fortune.
But I digress, my post today is related to pioneering research that is leading scientists to believe that probiotics play a very beneficial role in reducing belly fat!
IS THERE NEW SCIENCE BEHIND PROBIOTICS AND GETTING LEAN?
In a study from the European Association for the Study of Obesity, researchers discovered that pregnant women who took certain probiotics were far less likely to be obese or have a fat belly one year after giving birth.3
- Group 1 received dietary advice and daily capsules of probiotics.
- Group 2 received dietary advice and received placebo pills (no probiotics).
- Group 3 was not given dietary advice but also received placebo pills.
After one year, the researchers measured the women for what they call “central obesity,” the accumulation of abdominal fat resulting in an increased waist size. This is a form of obesity that is correlated with cardiovascular disease.
WHAT WERE THE RESULTS?
The women who took the real probiotics and not the placebo were more than 41% less likely to be obese than the women who received the placebo pills.
That means the women taking the probiotics significantly cut their risk of being fat.
While there isn’t enough proof to call this a sure thing, there are other studies that suggest probiotics can help you slim down:
- A study from 2010, published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, followed 87 people for 12 weeks as they drank fermented milk enhanced with a probiotic called Lactobacillus gasseri (LG2055). Compared to the control group, the people taking the LG2055 lost more body weight and belly fat.4
- An animal study published in the journal Microbiology showed that a specially-engineered probiotic had an impact on the metabolism and fat composition of mice. The authors of the study concluded that the probiotics may play a role in preventing obesity.5
- Another curious study published in the Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery followed patients recovering from gastric bypass surgery. Split into two groups, the patients who received the probiotics showed significantly greater weight loss than those who didn’t.6
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
Although few in number, studies such as these, are letting scientists know that probiotics may be a viable way to help control weight gain, and could even help you get rid of some belly fat. This is information that I wish I had known when I was pregnant with my children. Research is showing more and more the benefits of probiotics for both mother and baby!
Dr. Mercola wrote a great article about probiotics, pregnancy and weight. Read it here.
Rachael Neagle: The Lubbock Loudmouth 