Ad
related to: Can gut health help reduce cravings?Diet, stress management, sleep, and testing. Let's create a solid foundation for health. Your gut is connected to every aspect of your health. Find out how to protect it.
Search results
Nov 16, 2023 · 1. Eat Prebiotic-Rich Foods. Probiotics are the beneficial gut bacteria themselves, found in both supplements and fermented foods, whereas prebiotics are the food for probiotics. “Prebiotics are components in fiber — which our bodies can’t or don’t digest — like polydextrose, oligosaccharides, and inulin,” says Isabel Maples, RDN, a ...
- Cathy Garrard
- Overview
- Microbes and amino acids
- Wild cocktails
- Tryptophan’s role
- The study’s limitations
- More questions to explore
•A new study by University of Pittsburgh researchers suggests that intestinal microbes may trigger foraging behaviors for foods containing certain nutrients.
•In the study, researchers saw that mice bred to have no microbiome but later colonized with the gut microbiomes of different animals showed significant variations in their dietary behaviors.
•The authors believe that gut bacteria could affect our food choices and cravings by influencing the availability of essential amino acids.
The decisions we make about what to eat might not just come from our brains. The mechanisms driving our dietary choices may reach back to evolutionary processes with gut microbes.
For decades, scientists have wondered if intestinal flora drives food urges. However, no one had ever directly tested the hypothesis on animals larger than a fruit fly.
Dr, Kevin Kohl and Dr. Brian Trevelline from the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania explored this possibility with germ-free mice.
In an interview with Medical News Today, Dr. Trevelline explained how microbes play a role in nutrient making.
“Animals need a suite of essential amino acids to survive. But the microbes that live inside of our guts need [to] grow and have some of these same nutrients or make nutrients that the human body or the animal body can recognize. For instance, they make these essential amino acids, and then they’re released into the gut where they can be absorbed by the host,” he said.
Dr. Kohl, meanwhile, suggested that the microbes might also be broken down and digested to release nutrients as well.
Dr. Trevelline said the microbes in the gut were beneficial contributors to a lot of processes, particularly by synthesizing the nutrients humans need and supplementing our diets.
Drs. Kohl and Trevelline collected microbes from three wild rodent species with different natural diets. They gave these microbic “cocktails” to 30 mice engineered without gut microbiota.
The mice in each group began selecting foods rich in significantly different macronutrients.
Tryptophan, an essential amino acid, is a precursor to the neurotransmitter serotonin. Scientists believe that this hormone may regulate diet selection.
Drs. Trevelline and Kohl discovered that mice with different microbiota also had varying levels of tryptophan in their blood before choosing different diets. The mice with more tryptophan also had more microbes that could produce the amino acid in their guts.
As intriguing as the results are, it may be too soon to blame intestinal flora for all food cravings.
Drs. Kohl and Trevelline implanted microbiota from wild-type mice and voles into bioengineered members of the same species with no intestinal flora, quite an unnatural undertaking. However, the researchers say it was necessary to be able to observe how gut microbes modulate behavior in isolation.
This pioneering research hints at just one aspect of how microbes may interact with animal hosts. It did not compare the influence of microbes with any other factors.
“It could be that what you’ve eaten the day before is more important than just the microbes you have. Humans have way more going on that we ignore in our experiment, pointed out Dr. Kohl.
Whether microbes in our food influence food cravings is “up for future research,” Dr. Trevelline told MNT.
“Our microbiomes are constantly influenced by our environment, our lifestyles, and the animals and others we interact with. All that has the potential to influence our microbiota. But whether it produces some significant behavioral consequences is still an outstanding question at this point.”
Jan 29, 2024 · You may be able to improve and reset your gut health through lifestyle and diet changes. Consider trying one or more of the following to improve your gut health naturally: 1. Lower your stress ...
- The gut microbiome is affected by many factors, including: diet environment antibiotic use stress sleep genetics Each of these elements vary in dif...
- Fasting seems to benefit the gut microbiome, though more research in humans needs to be done. According to one small 2019 study of 16 people, fasti...
- Some studies have found no impact of probiotics on the gut microbiome. Still, other researchTrusted Source suggests that probiotics may significant...
Oct 2, 2019 · Top 13 probiotic foods that promote weight loss: Yogurt (without sugar), including nondairy coconut yogurt. Cheese made from raw milk. Kefir (fermented milk drink) Lassi (Indian yogurt drink) Sauerkraut (refrigerated, nonpasteurized) Pickles (refrigerated, nonpasteurized) Cultured veggies (refrigerated, nonpasteurized) Olives.
- Supplement with Fiber. Ever wonder why fiber is prescribed as a food and supplement to help diabetics lower blood sugar? Fiber is the #1 source of “fuel” for probiotic-rich (healthy) bacteria in your gut.
- Don’t Cut Out Carbs Entirely. Speaking of fiber (a carb), while low carb and ketogenic diets are very popular right now, low carb and keto diets can backfire on folks (and their gut health)—especially if you follow them for a long time.
- Eat Regular Meals. Not eating is “so hot right now”—habits like intermittent fasting, fasting and OMAD (one-meal-a-day). While proponents state these tactics “balance” blood sugar, in other cases, they completely dysregulate it!
- Get Your Beauty Sleep. Balanced blood sugar and healthy gut bugs go far beyond food and supplement popping. Did you know that just one night of sleep “deprivation” (less than your body’s ideal amount of sleep) results in approximately a 40% reduction in glucose tolerance?
Your gut bacteria could be to blame. Research indicates that the bacteria living in your gut can generate cravings for unhealthy foods, and can even have an effect on lowering your mood to try and ...
People also ask
Can gut bacteria affect our food choices and cravings?
Can microbes influence food cravings?
Does diet affect gut health?
Apr 4, 2022 · Fermented foods include brined pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi and yogurt. Healthy fats include some vegetables and their oils like olives and avocados that are high in omega-3 fatty acids. Focusing on adding the four F's to one's diet encourages good gut bacteria (e.g. Bifidobacterium and good Clostridium species that produce butyrate) to flourish.
