If you have done everything you can, including diet and exercise, and are not winning, your gut microbiome may be the culprit!
Sue, a 43-year-old lady with a family history of obesity, was born via caesarean section. Early in her twenties, she had a road traffic accident that resulted in bone fractures. This restricted her mobility. She also suffered from joint pain, requiring regular painkillers.
As a child, Sue consumed lots of sweets, giving her tooth pain and bleeding gums. She was later diagnosed with periodontal disease and treated with multiple courses of antibiotics. She tended to gain weight but kept it at bay with dieting.
Sue got married and developed gestational (pregnancy) diabetes in her second pregnancy. At this stage, she gained significant weight and could not lose it. She felt tense and irritable towards the end of the day and suffered from premenstrual symptoms, cramps, and heavy periods.
Sue’s diet was high in sugar and processed carbs, including cereals, pastries, rice, biscuits, crisps, chocolate, and fizzy drinks. It was also high in meat but low in fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, and seeds. She suffered from bloating immediately after a meal and had severe constipation, opening her bowels every 2 to 3 days.
She went to bed at 11 but regularly woke up at 2 am, unable to go back to sleep until 4 am. She slept 6 hours a night but did not feel refreshed in the morning. She reported a low energy level of 3 out of 10 and had an afternoon slump requiring a nap.
She had inflamed receding gums, a big round body, thick arms and legs, a high BMI at 37, a waist of 43 inches, high BP at 140/90, prediabetic blood sugar at 6.5 and HbA1C at 44, high inflammation marker hs-CRP at 3.75, and high cholesterol at 7.6. She also had an abnormal liver cell function test with high enzymes and very low vitamin D at 19 (optimal level over 100).
I will complete Sue’s story at the end of this blog.
In this blog, I will discuss the crucial role that your gut microbiome plays in your health, your immunity to disease, and your weight and body shape.
Your ideal body weight is crucial. A healthy BMI means a longer, healthy, independent life. On the other hand, a BMI over 40 reduces your lifespan by 6.5 years and, if you are over 50, by 13.7 years.
A study demonstrated that the bacteria grown from the stools of people who did not lose weight differed greatly from those who did.
Of mice and men
Many studies have demonstrated that taking stool samples from obese mice and implanting them into slim mice makes them obese. The opposite was true when the process was reversed. In addition, implanting the microbiome from an obese human also turned slim mice fat, while everything else remained the same, including their diet.
Our microbiome is an ecosystem that support all aspects of human life. You host a population of 100 trillion, a specific, unique set of microorganisms weighing about 1kg, in your gut.
The microbiome is a collection of bacteria, yeast, and viruses that can cooperate or compete. They can be thrown out of balance, leading to disease. However, a diverse microbiome make a strong, robust immune system.
The microbiome changes with age. The baby’s gut is sterile in utero. You gain your first dose of microorganisms while passing down the birth canal. This makes babies born by caesarean section disadvantaged for the rest of their lives due to missing that initial dose of gut microbes.
Your microbiome depends on what you eat , when you eat, and your other lifestyles, like sleep, physical activity, stress, and relaxation.
How does the gut microbiome influence your weight?
Microbiomes play a role in appetite and hunger, digestion of food, blood glucose control, fat storage and body weight. With a healthy microbiome, you enjoy steady energy levels, ideal body weight, a good quality of life, and avoid diseases. Your health span will equate to your life span.
Gut microorganisms can be classed as beneficial and harmful bacteria. The beneficial bacteria feed on healthy whole foods, while the harmful bacteria feed on unhealthy processed foods. Bad bacteria can trigger cravings for unhealthy, energy-dense food, resulting in weight gain.
Modern stool tests check the gut function – digestion and absorption – and measure the microbiome population. If you don’t have an adequate number of beneficial bacteria, the gap will be filled by harmful bacteria. You can measure these bacteria in the stool and eliminate or replace them as necessary.
Beneficial bacteria like Bifidobacterium help control your appetite and body weight. A study showed that taking a probiotic of this bacteria for 6 months reduced calorie intake, waist circumference and body fat percentage.
Another study found a friendly bacterium, Akkermansia muciniphila, enhances insulin sensitivity and promotes a lean body. As the name implies, the same bacteria produce mucus to protect the gut lining.
Beneficial bacteria were found dominant in the guts of people whose diets are rich in fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, and seeds, all rich in fibre.
Humans cannot digest fibre. Soluble fibre (prebiotic) stays intact until it reaches the colon, where the microbiota ferments it. Different bacteria specialise in breaking down different types of fibre. You need a wide range of fibre to give you enough diversity of microbiome to support different aspects of your health.
Multi-coloured phytonutrients rich in fibre include cabbage, carrots, avocados, celery, cucumber, pepper, lentils, olive oil, pomegranate and berries.
Good and bad microorganisms
Having more bad and fewer good microorganisms can cause inflammation and damage the gut wall, resulting in a leaky bowel. This can initiate an autoimmune process that damages the thyroid gland and causes an underactive thyroid, a well-known cause of obesity and being overweight.
We are also familiar with the overgrowth of bacteria or yeast in the small intestine (SIBO). The offending microorganism produces lipopolysaccharides (LPS), which trigger inflammation, insulin resistance and obesity. Patients with this condition suffer bloating immediately after a meal, often associated with diarrhoea or constipation.
An unbalanced microbiome also affects your appetite and food intake by altering leptin, which tells you you have eaten enough, and the hunger hormone Ghrelin.
Having harmful gut bacteria often interferes with the detoxifying of oestrogen, the female hormone. High oestrogen promotes obesity, interferes with the weight loss program, and is the underlying cause of PMS and endometriosis in ladies.
These bad bacteria produce an enzyme known as beta-glucuronidase in the gut, which splits oestrogen from the carrier protein and sets it free to be reabsorbed back into circulation. However, calcium glucarate inhibits the enzyme beta-glucuronidase to support detox of oestrogen until you clear the bad bacteria.
Besides metabolic diseases, the microbiome is responsible for many medical conditions, including autism, playing a significant role in mental health conditions like anxiety and depression.
How to harness a healthier microbiome
You need to supply your microbiome with bacteria in fermented food and prebiotics in foods high in fibre. Eating more fibre (prebiotics) increases microbiome diversity, reduces inflammation, and strengthens the immune system.
A plant-based diet supports a healthy gut microbiome and, thus, the immune system. Avoid processed carbs like cereals, pizza, pasta and biscuits, animal products, artificial sweeteners, and artificial flavours like glutamate and saturated fat.
We can also lose the bad bacteria during fasting, whilst the beneficial bacteria stay to produce more short-chain fatty acids, like butyrate. A calorie or time-restricted feeding may have a positive effect on the microbiome.
Eat fermented food and take probiotics. Supplement this with omega 3 versus omega 6. Omega 3 stimulates alkaline phosphatase production that heals the gut.
Restful sleep helps your gut microbiome because the microbiome also has a circadian rhythm. Avoiding blue light at night improves the quality of sleep and your microbiome. The interrupted pattern of sleep apnoea supports bad bacteria and increases the production of their toxins (LPS).
Exercise improves the quality of your gut bacteria and increases butyrate levels, improving your gut and brain health. Exercise and saunas are anti-inflammatory because they optimise gut bacteria, resulting in a strong and balanced immune system which is not overreactive or self-destructive.
Revolutionary faecal transplantation has reduced mortality in patients suffering from acute clostridium difficile infection. The effect of faecal transplants on chronic health conditions is promising but still at an early stage.
What does the microbiome do for you?
The gut microbiome controls many bodily activities, including metabolism, immune system function (defence, tolerance and allergies), gut health (motility, barrier function), and brain gut connections (anxiety, depression, autism).
Depression and anxiety evidence suggests that the microbiome can influence brain function through the dual carriage of the vagus nerve. The long nerve can send neurotransmitter (serotonin) signals from the gut to the brain, affecting mood and behaviour.
Studies showed a lack or decrease in the diversity of microbiomes in the guts of depressed people. The gut-beneficial microbiome produces 90% of your serotonin, the happy hormone. Having the wrong bacteria, your serotonin level plummets, turning you to sugar and carbs to lift your mood.
Your microbiome can also generate heat to keep you warm and change your basal metabolic rate (BMR) so you burn more calories.
What about Sue?
Sue missed out on her microbiome as she was delivered by caesarean section. Her gut test confirmed the overgrowth of methane-producing bacteria in her small intestine, giving her severe constipation. Her stool test showed low good but high bad bacteria (insufficiency dysbiosis.)
She then went on course of non absorbable locally acting antibiotic (Rifaximin) to eliminate bad bacteria and probiotics to populate beneficial ones.
She was not digesting fat, resulting in high stool fat, which made her stools float. Bile is essential for the digestion of fat. Sue could not produce enough bile due to fatty liver and the onset of non-alcoholic liver disease. She was given bile to support the digestion of fat.
She was also given detox support to rid her body of excess oestrogen and stress hormones. She attended a biological dentist to treat periodontal disease.
Having addressed the above health issues, Sue started making good progress. Given her endomorphic body type and efficient metabolism, she severely reduced her calorie intake and lost weight steadily.
So, my friends, you can see that, with the right testing – and thus the right diagnosis, it is possible to get your uncooperative weight loss program back on track – and your microbiome can often play a leading role in that change. Please share your thoughts and questions by commenting on this piece, and please subscribe to the newsletter so you don’t miss further vital information. Thank you!
References
The gut microbiome and its role in obesity
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5082693/
Extreme obesity shaves years off life expectancy
https://irp.nih.gov/blog/post/2020/01/extreme-obesity-shaves-years-off-life-expectancy
How your cat bacteria can influence your weight
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/gut-bacteria-and-weight
The influence of the Gut Microbiome on obesity in adults
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7333005/
Role of the gut microbiome in human nutrition and metabolism
