How food regimen impacts an individual’s weight seems to be way more complicated than beforehand thought as a result of potential position the intestine microbiome performs in nutrient absorption, power manufacturing, irritation and metabolism.
It’s now well-known that food regimen drastically influences the intestine microbiome, and extra just lately analysis has make clear how the intestine microbiome is altered in obese vs normal weight people.
For that reason, the analysis crew from the College of San Francisco led by Peter Turnbaugh, PhD sought to discover how adjustments within the intestine microbiome upon following a really low-calorie liquid food regimen (lower than 800 energy per day) have an effect on an individual’s well being past weight reduction.
Turnbaugh and colleagues research just lately revealed in Nature includes a human randomized intervention in 80 post-menopausal girls who had been obese or overweight and both adopted a medically supervised weight reduction program (8 weeks very low-calorie liquid food regimen adopted by 4 weeks typical low-calorie food regimen and 4 weeks of weight upkeep) or a management food regimen. The crew then sequenced fecal samples from the members earlier than, throughout and after the food regimen intervention over a interval of 16 weeks.
As anticipated, the liquid low calorie food regimen resulted in weight reduction and metabolic adjustments for many sufferers. For instance, members receiving this food regimen confirmed a weight discount of 14 kg and decrease adiposity that was nonetheless current at week 16.
Past its advantages on metabolic well being, the very low-calorie food regimen additionally precipitated a discount in brief chain fatty acid manufacturing and a rise in micro organism that feed off of glycans, that are a kind of polysaccharide, that had been current within the liquid low calorie food regimen.
The researchers additional explored if the intestine microbiota was answerable for the sufferers’ weight reduction by transferring stool samples obtained from members earlier than and after 12 weeks of weight reduction program into experimental mice that didn’t have a microbiome of their very own. The mice misplaced weight and fats tissue just like the human members, even if they weren’t on a low-calorie food regimen suggesting that the donor intestine microbiome doubtless performed a significant position in weight reduction. The researchers consider the load loss was attributable to a shift within the intestine microbiome that led to decreased dietary power absorption. Surprisingly, Turnbaugh’s crew found that weight reduction was related to increased ranges of the pathogenic micro organism Clostridioides difficile, which is thought to trigger extreme diarrhea and hospitalization.
Curiously, though weight reduction correlated with increased ranges of C. difficile toxins, colonization of this pathogen didn’t trigger excessive ranges of irritation, which it generally does, suggesting that this bacterium can also play a task in altering metabolism.
Importantly, dietary intervention decreased whole bile acid swimming pools. Sure intestine micro organism can convert bile into the metabolite secondary bile salts which inhibit the expansion of C. difficile within the intestine. The authors recommend that the decreased ranges of bile salts within the intestine don’t enable to maintain the expansion of C. difficile below management.
In conclusion, though following a really low calorie food regimen could also be efficient option to drop some pounds rapidly, long-term excessive calorie restriction might have lasting detrimental penalties for the intestine microbiome and total well being.
Regardless that this research solely analyzed the results of 1 sort of very low-calorie liquid preparations, it sheds mild on the potential detrimental results calorie restriction can have on the intestine microbiota composition which might produce other well being implications down the highway. Due to this fact, the long-term results dietary interventions, akin to extreme calorie restriction, have on the intestine microbiota composition and performance needs to be thought-about in future research in overweight sufferers.
Reference: von Schwartzenberg, R.J., Bisanz, J.E., Lyalina, S. et al. Caloric restriction disrupts the microbiota and colonization resistance. Nature 595, 272–277 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03663-4