SCIENCE! Probiotics
Despite the bad rap that bacteria have gotten ever since Louis Pasteur found them responsible for spoiling wine (who wouldn't be upset with something that spoils your wine?), people just love probiotics. Whether in capsule form or in fermented foods, probiotics are catching on as a potential boon to health and wellness. In this SCIENCE! we look at the evidence for the benefit of probiotics.
The International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (a real group, not making this up) published in August 2017 that 'improving human health through modulation of the microbiome is an evolving strategy that is part of a comprehensive, holistic approach to lifestyle wellness.' There are many ways to modulate the microbiome, and probiotics are one of them.
In February of 2017 in the European Journal of Nutrition, scientists fed fermented milk with 1 x10^11 viable cells of lactobacillus casei strain shirota to healthy office workers and found that the incidence of upper respiratory tract infections was reduced. Forget your vitamin C and echinacea (neither of which have ever been convincingly proven to fight a common cold) and pick up your probiotic!
Much of the myriad of benefits attributed to dairy kefir is thought to be due to the probiotics it contains (see our SCIENCE! Dairy Kefir for more information).
A study (admittedly of fairly low quality) from 2017 in PLOS One discussed 'The Gut Makeover' nutrition plan which included probiotic foods. The study reported improvements in digestion, cognition, and physical and emotional wellbeing.
Studies of lean and obese mice suggest that the gut microbiota affect energy balance by influencing the efficiency of calorie harvest from the diet, and how this harvested energy is utilized and stored. In other words, slim mice can eat more and burn fewer calories yet remain slim, possibly because of their microbiome composition. On the other hand, obese mice can eat less and exercise more, yet still be obese, presumably because of their suboptimal microbiome. But presumably you are not a rat.
So when you look at that incredibly frustrating friend of yours who can eat whatever she wants, never exercise, and yet stay slim and you just really want to dump that entire milkshake she is drinking right on her head, don't blame her. Blame your microbiome.
HOWEVER, does introducing a few billion colony forming units of bacteria make even the tiniest dent in your microbiome that consists of TRILLIONS of bacteria? Hard to believe that it would…