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Are you taking a daily probiotic supplement? No? Well, experts say it could be the best way to help shed stubborn weight.
Probiotics help improve your digestive health by restoring your body’s bacterial balance. “When gut balance is out of whack, you may feel bloated, be constipated, have diarrhea, or experience many other digestive ills. Resetting your gut balance with probiotics can improve all of these—as well as almost every other aspect of our health, not just digestion,” Denise Mann, MS, who suggests taking an L. rhamnosus probiotic to help with weight loss.
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L. rhamnosus probiotics are members of the Bacteroidetes family, which Will Bulsiewicz, MD, a gastroenterologist in Mount Pleasant, SC., says are naturally produced by those who are in shape.
“Lean individuals have a higher proportion of bacteria from the Bacteriodetes family, while obese individuals have more from the Firmicutes family,” Dr. Bulsiewicz explains. “This means that obese individuals carry gut microbes that are designed to efficiently extract the bad parts of our food, namely from fat and sugar, and the implication is that by modulating our gut flora to maximize Bacteroidetes and minimize Firmicutes, we can optimize healthy energy harvesting from our food and kick our obesity problem to the curb. If we choose the right blend of bacteria, the scale can tip in our favor.”
Mann referenced a recent study conducted by the researchers from Université Laval in Quebec, Canada, who placed 125 overweight men and women on a 12-week weight-loss diet, followed by a 12-week period aimed at maintaining body weight.
The women in the study who took probiotics from the L. rhamnosus family daily lost twice as much weight, compared with their counterparts who did not take probiotics.
Dr. Bulsiewicz also lists probiotics that contain L. gasseri as viable weight loss-friendly supplements. “L. gasseri, in particular, has been associated with reductions in body weight and belly fat, with one study showing that participants taking L. gasseri lost 8.5 percent of their belly fat after just 12 weeks,” he continues. “The ideal probiotic would feature the Bacteroidetes family, specifically several types of Lactobacillus bacteria including L. gasseri.”
But you won’t really see the results you want unless you’re taking a “diverse” probiotic.
“A perfect example of this is the Advanced Gut Health Probiotic by Genuine Health. It includes ten types of Lactobacillus including L. gasseri. It also has five additional Bacteroidetes bacterial strains,” Dr. Bulsiewicz concludes.
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