Are your gut bugs making you fat?
Firstly hang on a second, I know what you’re thinking: “You’re fat because you eat too much and move too little, it’s all calories in v calories out!”
Park that thought just for a minute, and have a read of some of the latest evidence that has been found. For quite a while now we have been talking about species of probiotics like the bifidobacteriums and lactobacillus and saccharomyces boulardi and prescribing these to clients has become a way of life for Naturopaths like me, helping our clients get their gut right. What the researchers are now finding is that there is a better way of identifying what is going on with our gut bugs.
According to researchers obesity IS connected to our micro biome and in a different way than what you might think. The “families” of bugs that live in our gut are the gram-positive Firmicutes and gram-negative Bacteroidetes. There are some other families but to keep it simple we will focus on these two groups today as they play the biggest role in changes to our body’s processes. What we are finding again and again in different studies is that the larger the Firmicute to Bacteroidete ratio we have, the more likely we are to be overweight or obese. Simply put higher populations of Firmicutes are associated with obesity vs higher populations of Bacteroidetes are associated with weight loss.
So what do Firmicutes do in our gut? One of the major ways that these bugs can contribute to obesity and all of the sickness that goes with it is that they increase our caloric yield from foods. This means that the fit dude sitting next to us can eat the exact same meal as us and we have to process more calories because of the bugs in our guts. This is not fun for anyone, especially those who might have even a slight case of insulin resistance.
Another function of these pesky bugs is that they are known to recycle hormones in the gut. Which is bad news for those of us who are oestrogen dominant. Not only then do our ovaries and fat cells produce estrogens, but then our gut bugs recycle them as well!
NOOOOO!!! I hear you all say.
Well… you’re not doomed and there is actually plenty that you can do about it that doesn’t include the prescription of probiotics to change our gut flora ratios.
What we CAN do is change our diet to feed our Bacteroidetes, starving the Firmicutes and at the same time killing them off by eating polyphenol rich foods. In layman’s terms just eat the rainbow! If you want to take a shortcut you can purchase a wonderful product called Gutright by ATP Science which I stock in my clinic and in the shop here as well. On the 15th of October, the 10 day gut reset begins, the free challenge will be released shortly so stay tuned for that!
So there you have it. Next time you see someone struggling with weight and want to be all judgey, wudgey take a second and think that maybe it’s their micro biome giving them grief. Get your guts right and nutrient status in check and then magical shifts can start to happen.
https://www.clinicalmicrobiologyandinfection.com/retrieve/pii/S1198743X14609769
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