In this article, we’ll try to figure out how does a probiotic help with weight loss. As most of you guys must know that probiotics are recognized as micro-organisms promoting friendly bacterias.
On the other hand, the advantages of including probiotics in your food are far beyond your imagination. Now you must be wondering from where can you get the probiotics well probiotics could be found in fermented foods and supplements.
You could even use probiotics to improve heart health, immune function, and digestive system which could be the cause of several other diseases.
Different studies run by the organizations in America also pointed out that “probiotics could help with weight loss“…pretty shocking right!
Based on a study its proved that eating yogurt with Lactobacillus fermentum or Lactobacillus amylovorus could also reduce the weight from 3-4 percent over 6 weeks.
Another study on women using probiotics proved that “50% or more weight could be lost within 3 months“. The effects take place by using a probiotic to reduce weight are even faster than a placebo pill.
The comparison study between probiotics and placebo pills on 114 adults. Proved that “probiotic Lactobacillus sakei could reduce the weight more quickly than a placebo pill in 12 weeks“.
How your gut bacteria affect weight loss
The gut of any person contains different bacteria including harmful and friendly bacterias which are an important part of your microbiome. The overall figure of these teeny-tiny bacterias could be in trillions. These bacterias are responsible to
- Break down the medication
- Keep the gut healthy
- Improve the immune system
- Protecting against germs
- Break down nutrients
In case if the bacterias found in your gut get unbalanced then you could end up in dysbiosis. The dysbiosis could further cause digestive problems such as inflammatory bowel disease and bowel syndrome.
Dysbiosis could also lead to several other problems such as brain disorders and allergies. Although the way bacteria could affect the weight still couldn’t be understood by the experts.
To understand this researchers even run studies on the set of twins. They concluded that the obese ones have less diversity of gut bacteria as compared to the lean ones.
Several other studies run by different experts indicate that “certain strains of bacteria could slow down weight gain“. While some of the strains could only reduce the size of the waist.
On the other hand, other strains of bacteria could help with weight loss. Still, the researchers couldn’t find any connection between weight and bacteria.
The friendly bacteria could also affect the metabolism of a body. By following ways
- Making folate
- Making vitamin B12
- Making vitamin k
- Making short-chain fatty acids
- Making biotin
- Breaking down ferment fibers
- Breaking down carbohydrates
- Absorbing magnesium
- Absorbing calcium
- Absorbing iron.
Short-chain fatty acids made by these bacterias could be useful to tolerate sugar and use energy more efficiently. You could even suppress the appetite through the short-chain fatty acids to understand it more properly researches are still in progress around the world.
Do Probiotics Help With Weight Loss?
We all know that probiotics promote the friendly bacterias used to break down the nutrients to gather energy from the food you munch. Still, there isn’t clear evidence that probiotics could help with weight loss. Anyhow here’s what we’ve found…so far!
Visceral fat
This could be found around the organs and can impact the working of the hormones. Visceral fat is also directly linked to obesity, which could cause insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.
According to clinical trials, patients with a large number of visceral fat could easily lose some of the weight. After taking 200 grams of probiotics containing fermented milk regularly until 3 months.
Unfortunately, there is a conflict in other trials using specific supplements of probiotics. Based on these trials it was found that some strains of probiotics could help with weight loss while others don’t. The best probiotic that may help with weight loss depends upon different factors:
- Type of probiotic
- Starting weight
- Dosage
- Age
- How long do you take them
Risks of probiotics for Weight Loss
There is no doubt that probiotics are generally safe to use. Still, it involves some risks in this section Pro-bioform is going to share these risks with you.
1. Different Strains
Different bacteria strains could be found in any probiotic supplement. Like we discussed above although the researchers are still working worldwide to figure which strain may affect weight loss most.
This is a very important point that needs to be remembered by you before taking any probiotic supplement for weight loss.
2. Immune system problems
People suffering from server diseases or bad immune system needs to avoid using probiotics as it could make the situation worst. In short, the use of probiotics could be prohibited if you’re already taking medicines that suppress the immune system. Therefore it’ll be best for you to consult with the doctor before taking any kind of probiotic supplement.
3. Quality
Some rules and regulations are applied in the case of the production of food supplements or products. But unfortunately, in the case of probiotics, it doesn’t happen this means the quality of the probiotics could be compromised easily while production.
Moreover, you won’t be sure that what are you getting after spending all your savings. Furthermore, you can’t even find out what kind of bacterias are included in your probiotics supplement.
Most of the time bacteria strains included in a probiotic are mentioned on the label. But believe me, you wouldn’t want to rely on that. Because there are reports of probiotics that have different strains than what is listed on the label.
On the other hand, the bacterias are also living organisms and required a specific environment to survive. If the suitable conditions for storing the probiotics don’t maintain or the probiotic is close to its expiry date. This could make the bacteria hard to survive and ultimately effects the probiotic useless for your gut.
Conclusion
After exploring the overall topic we could say that probiotics may help with weight loss. But to get effective results you must consider different factors discussed in this topic.
Furthermore, if you’re already taking medication that could suppress the gut then please avoid the use of probiotics.
In the end, it’s strongly recommended that “don’t use probiotics without the consultation of a doctor“. Especially if you’re already taking medication that could suppress the gut.
