For those of you who don’t know about them, Probiotics are bacteria that help maintain a healthy bacterial balance in the GI tract by reducing the growth of harmful bacteria, and are part of the normal digestive system. Researchers have for many years been studying the potential of using probiotic supplementation to address a number of intestinal diseases and some are touting their benefits in preventing inflammation and building a healthy immune system, too. But now we have a new reason to cheer for Probiotics.
A recent study has shown that one year after giving birth, women were less likely to have the most dangerous kind of obesity if they had been given probiotics from the first trimester of pregnancy, meaning, that changing the balance of bacteria in the gut may actually help fight obesity. In the study, 256 women were randomly divided into three groups during the first trimester of pregnancy. Two of the groups received dietary counseling and given food with monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids, plus fiber-enriched pasta and breakfast cereal to take home. One of those groups also received daily capsules of probiotics containing Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, which are the most commonly used probiotics and the other received placebo capsules and a third group received dummy capsules and no dietary counseling. The capsules were continued until the women stopped exclusive breastfeeding, up to 6 months. They found central obesity, defined as a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more or a waist circumference over 80 cm, in 25% of the women who had been given the probiotics plus diet advice. That compared with 43% of the women who got dietary counseling alone and 40% of the women who got neither diet advice nor probiotics. The average body fat percentage in the probiotics group was 28%, compared with 29% in the diet advice only group and 30% in the third group. Though more research is clearly needed, its certainly intriguing to consider that the bacteria that live inside us may actually help us to drop excess weight!