How food plan impacts an individual’s weight seems to be far more advanced than beforehand thought because of the potential function the intestine microbiome performs in nutrient absorption, power manufacturing, irritation and metabolism.
It’s now well-known that food plan significantly influences the intestine microbiome, and extra just lately analysis has make clear how the intestine microbiome is altered in overweight vs regular weight people.
For that reason, the analysis crew from the College of San Francisco led by Peter Turnbaugh, PhD sought to discover how modifications within the intestine microbiome upon following a really low-calorie liquid food plan (lower than 800 energy per day) have an effect on an individual’s well being past weight reduction.
Turnbaugh and colleagues research just lately printed in Nature entails a human randomized intervention in 80 post-menopausal ladies who have been obese or overweight and both adopted a medically supervised weight reduction program (8 weeks very low-calorie liquid food plan adopted by 4 weeks standard low-calorie food plan and 4 weeks of weight upkeep) or a management food plan. The crew then sequenced fecal samples from the individuals earlier than, throughout and after the food plan intervention over a interval of 16 weeks.
As anticipated, the liquid low calorie food plan resulted in weight reduction and metabolic modifications for many sufferers. For instance, individuals receiving this food plan 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 plan additionally brought about a discount in brief chain fatty acid manufacturing and a rise in micro organism that feed off of glycans, that are a sort of polysaccharide, that have been current within the liquid low calorie food plan.
The researchers additional explored if the intestine microbiota was liable for the sufferers’ weight reduction by transferring stool samples obtained from individuals 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 individuals, even though they weren’t on a low-calorie food plan suggesting that the donor intestine microbiome doubtless performed a serious function in weight reduction. The researchers consider the burden loss was brought on by a shift within the intestine microbiome that led to decreased dietary power absorption. Surprisingly, Turnbaugh’s crew found that weight reduction was related to larger ranges of the pathogenic micro organism Clostridioides difficile, which is understood to trigger extreme diarrhea and hospitalization.
Curiously, though weight reduction correlated with larger ranges of C. difficile toxins, colonization of this pathogen didn’t trigger excessive ranges of irritation, which it generally does, suggesting that this bacterium may play a task in altering metabolism.
Importantly, dietary intervention decreased complete 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 permit to maintain the expansion of C. difficile underneath management.
In conclusion, though following a really low calorie food plan could also be efficient technique to drop a few pounds shortly, long-term excessive calorie restriction could 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 attainable detrimental results calorie restriction can have on the intestine microbiota composition which may produce other well being implications down the highway. Subsequently, the long-term results dietary interventions, akin to extreme calorie restriction, have on the intestine microbiota composition and performance must 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