Probiotics are supplements made up of live, good bacteria. They can also include yeasts.
You always have certain amounts of good and bad bacteria in your system at any time. Ideally, you have the right balance between the two. If something happens to knock that balance out of whack, you could experience symptoms or less-than-optimal health.
One reason some people use probiotics is to help with gut health and weight loss. There are certain products like Floracil50 for weight loss that tend to have benefits in this area in particular.
Below, we cover key facts about probiotics and weight loss and how fast you could potentially drop pounds if you started to supplement with these products.
Understanding Probiotics
The biggest role of good bacteria is to maintain a sense of balance in your body. When you’re sick, bad bacteria can increase in your body, and then you’re out of balance. The presence of good bacteria helps you get back into balance.
Good bacteria control inflammation and support a strong, healthy immune system.
Good bacteria help you digest food properly, create vitamins and help support the cells lining your gut to prevent the bad bacteria from entering your blood.
Theoretically, your body can maintain its sense of balance without you supplementing with a probiotic, but many elements of our modern lives impact our gut flora. Gut flora is the more than 100 trillion bacteria living in your gut.
Some of the things that reduce the rich diversity of your gut flora can include:
- Not eating a varied diet
- A lack of dietary prebiotics. Prebiotics can come from foods like fruits, whole grains, and vegetables.
- Having too much alcohol regularly
- The use of antibiotics
- A lack of physical exercise
- Smoking
- Not getting adequate sleep
- Chronic stress
How Do Probiotics Help with Weight Loss?
There are a few ways that probiotics can help with weight loss, specifically belly fat.
First, probiotics appear to affect your appetite and how your body uses energy through the production of short-chain fatty acids. Short-chain fatty acids include acetate, propionate, and butyrate.
Probiotics can also potentially block the absorption of dietary fat, so you would get rid of more rather than your body absorbing it.
Probiotics might release hormones that regulate your appetite, including FLP-1 and PYY. When you have increased levels of these hormones, it can help you burn fat and calories.
Taking a probiotic can also help increase the levels of certain proteins that reduce the body’s fat storage.
In particular, strains from the Lactobacillus family helped with weight loss and belly fat reduction. In one study, having yogurt with strains of Lactobacillus helped reduce body fat by anywhere from 3-4% over six weeks.
In another study with 125 overweight participants, women taking Lactobacillus strains of probiotics lost 50% more weight over three months than participants taking a placebo.
Specifically, of all the strains, Lactobacillus gasseri appears to have the most beneficial effects for weight loss. In several animal studies, this strain has been shown to have anti-obesity effects. There are also human studies with similarly promising outcomes. In a study of 210 people with significant belly fat, taking L. gasseri for 12 weeks reduced their body fat, body mass index, waist size, hip circumference, and fat around their organs.
Belly fat in this study went down by 8.5% but was gained back when participants stopped taking the probiotic.
In a study of people taking a particular formulation called VSL#3, after four weeks, there was reduced weight and fat gain in people who followed a diet that was high in calories.
How Long To Lose Weight on Probiotics?
While everyone is different, as highlighted by the above studies, taking probiotics could potentially help you lose weight in a relatively short period. For example, the longest study cited above was only for three months, yet people did lose weight. There were much shorter studies showing similar effects.
If your goal is to lose weight on probiotics, you can speed up the results you experience by taking other steps like reducing your calorie intake and getting exercise.
Along with helping with weight loss, probiotics have numerous other health benefits. They can, for example, help your immune system function and reduce systemic inflammation. Systemic inflammation is associated with serious chronic health conditions like cancer and cardiovascular disease.
If you don’t already include probiotics in your daily routine, it’s worth considering.
