obesity Archives

The Gut-Brain Link to Depression and Obesity

It wasn’t long ago that conventional medicine debated the existence of the gut-brain axis, the connection that links your emotions, intestines and brain.

The medical community couldn’t dispute it for long, however, given that about 90 percent of serotonin, a chemical that sends messages from one side of the brain to the other, is produced in the human gut.

Obesity and diabetes are serious conditions that harm many parts of your health, including your gut. (Remember, gut health problems could be a warning sign of type 1 diabetes?)

Eating a high-fat diet, a direct contributor to obesity and diabetes, creates greater emotional problems and direct shifts in the makeup of bacteria in the gut too, according to findings from the Joslin Research Center (affiliated with Harvard Medical School).

In their work with mice, Joslin researchers had long studied the damage done by diabetes, obesity and other metabolic health problems in their work with mice fed high-fat diets.

One variable stood out in their previous research: Obese mice that had been fed high-fat diets showed far more signs of emotional problems (depression, anxiety and obsessive behaviors) than animals fed healthier diets.

For their newest study, researchers took a different approach by giving mice behavioral tests commonly used to screen drugs for depression and anxiety. They learned mice that were fed high-fat diets experienced greater amounts of depression and anxiety.

However, when scientists took steps to change the gut health makeup of obese mice by giving them antibiotics their emotional health improved.

Taking that gut bacteria shift one step further, Joslin research also discovered the gut microbiomes of obese mice triggered emotional problems when they were transplanted in germ-free mice. And other germ-free mice that received gut bacteria from obese mice given antibiotics showed no signs of emotional problems either.

Where the gut-brain link really came into play was when researchers examined parts of the brain that govern metabolism and emotions, according to Dr. C. Ronald Kahn, Chief Academic Officer who leads the Section on Integrative Physiology and Metabolism at Joslin.

Like other tissues, these areas of the brain became insulin-resistant in test animals fed high-fat diets and this resistance was mediated partly by their microbiomes, Dr. Kahn said.

The Joslin team also found alterations in the gut health of mice were linked to the production of some chemicals that send signals across the brain too.

Now, scientists are studying specific populations of bacteria involved in the gut-brain axis that may govern this process, with an eye on creating healthier metabolic profiles in the brain.

Interestingly, Dr. Kahn points out the problems of using antibiotics as “blunt tools that change many bacteria in very dramatic ways.”

“Going forward, we want to get a more sophisticated understanding about which bacteria contribute to insulin resistance in the brain and other tissues. If we could modify those bacteria, either by putting in more beneficial bacteria or reducing the number of harmful bacteria, that might be a way to see improved behavior.”

Fortunately, there’s a growing body of evidence that shows probiotics like EndoMune Advance Probiotic may be a safe and proven tool for treating behavioral issues among mice and humans and provide some extra help to fight obesity too.

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Your Gut Bacteria Have a 24-Hour Routine

Digestive Health, Mental Health, Probiotics / By @drHoberman

Messing up your body’s circadian rhythms — the behavioral, mental and physical changes that follow a 24-hour cycle — can have a huge effect on your health and gut.

Merely traveling on an airplane across multiple time zones can trigger jet lag, a temporary sleep problem when your body’s internal rhythms and biological clock are out of sync.

Apparently, your gut bacteria have a circadian schedule too, and a pair of studies shows how they affect your health for better and worse.

Following a schedule

Research by scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science on mice in a study appearing in Cell demonstrated how gut bacteria follow a schedule, adapting to changes in light and dark, metabolic fluctuations and even the timing of our meals, says Dr. Eran Segel.

In fact, your microbiome moves around within the gut and are exposed to different species and varying numbers of species over the course of a 24-hour day.

Moreover, those changes brought on by circadian rhythms affect not only the physiology of the body but tissues and organs like the liver. Those rhythms can even govern how your body may metabolize and detoxify a drug as basic as acetaminophen.

Scientists also learned how the circadian rhythms of the bodies of little mice (and perhaps humans too) are very dependent on the workings of the microbiome. Surprisingly, genes that show no signs of circadian rhythms take over when these microbial rhythms are disrupted too.

These findings were observed when researchers gave mice antibiotics that removed much of their gut bacteria and even when their feeding times were changed.

Circadian rhythms and obesity

This inter-dependence between the gut and the body’s circadian rhythms could play a role behind the scenes in promoting the accumulation of body fat that leads to obesity, according to a recent study conducted at the University of Texas Southwestern and published in the journal, Science.

Based on tests that compared the health of germ-free, conventionally raised and genetically modified mice, scientists learned how the microbiome controls fat uptake and storage by “hacking into” and altering the functions of the circadian clocks within cells that line the gut.

They identified the mechanism by which gut bacteria regulate the composition of body fat and use a chemical (circadian transcription factor NFIL3) to establish a critical molecular link between the microbiota, circadian clock and metabolism, says Dr. Lora Hooper, lead author of the study, according to a press release.

So how does the microbiota hack into the lining of the gut?

A body’s circadian clock senses those day and night cycles, which are linked closely to feeding times, and transmits that information to the gut to turn on and off the metabolism (the uptake of lipids) when necessary.

More specifically, the circadian rhythms of the gut control the expression of NFIL3 and the production of lipids that are governed by this chemical in the intestinal lining.

“So what you have is a really fascinating system where two signals from the environment come in – the microbiome and the day-night changes in light – and converge on the gut lining to regulate how much lipid you take up from your diet and store as fat,” says Dr. Hooper.

How does this affect you?

Our go-go-GO! lifestyles create all sorts of havoc with our sleep schedules and often distract us from eating healthy meals on a timely basis, creating an environment for all sorts of health problems down the line.

Eating a balanced diet and getting the right amount of sleep your body needs every night really matters. And, we’ve learned in these studies, so does the health of the human gut, especially if you do a lot of traveling or work a crazy schedule that mixes daytime and nighttime hours.

That’s why it’s so important to give the health of your gut an added boost by taking a multi-species probiotic, like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic, that features 10 proven and protective strains of beneficial bacteria and a prebiotic that feeds the good bugs and may improve your sleep too!

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Mangos may protect your gut from high-fat diets

Diet, Digestive Health / By @drHoberman

Not only do high-fat diets chock full of high-calorie fast foods and short on fiber expand your waistline, trigger blood sugar spikes and harm your heart, they disrupt the gut-brain axis that increases your risks for depression and other related health problems.

Fortunately, there’s very healthy and delicious foods you can eat that do double-duty to promote a healthy gut and protect your body from disease, like almonds and dark chocolate.

Add the flavorful, low-fat/high-fiber mango to that list of gut-healthy foods, based on a recent Journal of Nutrition study.

Beating the obesity epidemic sweetly

You may recall how researchers have concluded more diversity in the gut lowers your chances of obesity. Conversely, previous studies have also found lower levels of Bifidobacteria in people fighting obesity as well as type 2 diabetes.

Scientists at Oklahoma State University and North Carolina State University compared the health of 60 male mice, based on feeding them high-fat diets supplemented with or without mangos and in varying amounts (1 or 10 percent).

Animals fed a high-fat diet plus 10 percent in mangos — equal to humans eating 1.5 cups of this delicious fruit — retained more of their gut bacteria than those fed lower amounts.

Also, the addition of mangos to the diets of mice resulted in their guts containing more gut bacteria, specifically Bifidobacteria and Akkermansia (bacteria found in lower amounts in obese animals), and improved production of short-chain fatty acids (SFCAs), beneficial compounds that have anti-inflammatory properties.

“Fiber and other bioactive compounds in plant-based foods are suggested to prevent gut dysbiosis caused by a high-fat diet,” said Edralin A. Lucas, Ph.D., professor of nutritional sciences at Oklahoma State and lead researcher of the study, according to a press release.

“The results of this animal study showed that adding mango to the diet may help maintain and regulate gut health and levels of beneficial bacteria levels.”

What’s ahead

Researchers caution more work needs to be done to confirm the benefits of eating mangos on the human gut once and for all, especially for those whose diets aren’t the healthiest.

Despite their nutritional benefits — the average serving (one cup) of mangos contains about 100 percent of Vitamin C and 35 percent of Vitamin A — this juicy stone fruit has 23 grams of sugar and 25 grams of carbohydrates, not small amounts for people who are trying to kick the sugar habit. (So, if you enjoy mangos, be sure to eat them in moderation.)

No matter how nutritious, fatty or sugary your diet may be, taking a probiotic with multiple strains of beneficial bacteria like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic is a safe, proven way to protect your health and your gut.

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Fish oil promotes healthy gut bacteria

Diet, Digestive Health / By @drHoberman

Taking a fish oil supplement rich in omega-3 fatty acids has emerged as a potent and necessary weapon for maintaining optimal health by protecting our bodies from an assortment of problems, including many related to cardiovascular health.

The need for omega-3 supplementation has grown due to an imbalance in our Western diets, which are full of high-fat, processed foods containing omega-6 fatty acids, and has perpetuated our current obesity epidemic.

Our bodies require both kinds of fatty acids to thrive. Ratios of 2:1 to 4:1 (omega-6 to omega-3 fats) are necessary to maintain good health. Unfortunately, the average diet contains up to 25 times more omega-6 fatty acids than omega-3s.

If you don’t eat fish high in omega-3s like salmon, herring, sardines or tuna at least twice a week, a fish oil supplement may be a smart choice for the health of your body thanks to your gut, according to a new study featured in Cell Metabolism.

First, European scientists monitored the metabolic health of mice while feeding them fish oil or lard for 11 weeks. Based on the problems of the Western diet, the lard “diet” promoted the growth of Bilophila, gut bacteria linked to inflammation.

On the other hand, mice that consumed fish oil increased their production of Akkermansia mucinphila, gut bacteria that improved the metabolism of glucose and reduced extra weight.

“We were surprised that the lard and the fish oil diet, despite having the same energy content and the same amount of dietary fiber – which is the primary energy source for the gut bacteria – resulted in fundamentally different gut microbiota communities and the microbiota had such large effects on health,” says study co-author Dr. Robert Caesar, according to a press release.

Scientists conducted a follow-up round of tests, transplanting fecal samples from mice fed fish oil or lard into antibiotic-treated mice fed a lard diet for three weeks. Mice receiving fecal samples enhanced by fish oil gained less weight and produced lower levels of lipopolysaccharides than those fed lard.

Based on this small mice study, taking fish oil may be a good supplement for your overall gut-health along with a probiotic, ideally a multi-strain product like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic containing 10 strains of beneficial bacteria.

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Artificial sweeteners may harm your gut health

Diet, Digestive Health / By @drHoberman

Earlier this year, we explained how poor gut health can be one underlying factor that contributes to the epidemic of obesity plaguing our country.

So, you start on the right track by getting the right amount of exercise and sleep, cutting down on fatty foods, and switching from products containing real sugar to those made with non-caloric artificial sweeteners (to liven up that early morning infusion of java).

Unfortunately, those artificial sweeteners—specifically sucralose (sold in America as Splenda), aspartame (Nutrasweet and Equal) and saccharine (Necta Sweet or Sweet‘N Low)—may have the opposite effect, according to research published in the journal Nature.

Scientists from the Weizman Institute of Science’s Department of Immunology (Israel) made the discovery after feeding 10-week-old mice one of several diets (normal or high-fat) and water laced with one of the artificial sweeteners mirroring amounts sanctioned by the FDA, plain water or water mixed with glucose.

Eleven weeks later, the test animals exhibited signs of glucose intolerance, an indicator signaling several metabolic conditions including adult-onset diabetes or metabolic syndrome. What’s more, repeating the same test with different mice and different amounts of artificial sweeteners produced the very same results.

How test animals react to artificial sweeteners

Then, researchers tested a theory that the gut’s reaction to artificial sweeteners may be triggering glucose intolerance, because our bodies don’t recognize the sugar as food, using only saccharin. Interestingly, they found saccharin isn’t absorbed by the gut but does have contact with the gut bacteria in mice, which triggers glucose intolerance.

Other signs that gut bacteria was affected by artificial sweeteners:

Treating the mice with antibiotics reversed the process completely.
Transferring the microbiota of mice harmed by artificial sweeteners to sterile mice conferred the same results to the new animals.
DNA sequencing revealed contact with saccharin affected the diversity of gut bacteria.
Even placing the affected gut microbiota outside the bodies of sterile mice along with artificial sweeteners was enough to induce glucose intolerance.

How YOUR gut reacts to artificial sweeteners

Lastly, researchers at the Weisman Institute turned to data collected from The Personalized Nutrition Project, the largest human trial to study the connections between the human gut microbiota and nutrition.

Based just on the reporting of some 400 people (at this time only from Israel) participating in the project, scientists discovered a significant connection between their gut bacteria, self-reported consumption of artificial sweeteners and clinical signs of glucose intolerance.

Finally, scientists recruited seven fit and health volunteers who didn’t use artificial sweeteners to incorporate the maximum daily amount of it in their diets for seven days. The gut health of four patients changed to a balance associated with the propensity for metabolic diseases, while the remaining three weren’t affected at all.

Why were some volunteers affected, but others weren’t? Specific bacteria in the guts of those who developed glucose intolerance reacted to the fake sugar by secreting substances that triggered an inflammatory response similar to sugar overdose, thus promoting changes in the body’s ability to metabolize sugar, said Dr. Eran Elinav.

Even more compelling: Treating mice with gut bacteria of volunteers whose gut bacteria developed glucose intolerance triggered the same result.

Taking a probiotic protects your gut

“Our relationship with our own individual mix of gut bacteria is a huge factor in determining how the food we eat affects us,” said Dr. Elinav in a press release. “Especially intriguing is the link between use of artificial sweeteners—through the bacteria in our guts—to a tendency to develop the very disorders they were designed to prevent; this calls for reassessment of today’s massive, unsupervised consumption of these substances.”

Because the effect of artificial sweeteners wasn’t universal, it’s possible that probiotics could be used to shift gut bacteria in order to reverse the damage done by glucose intolerance, said Dr. Eran Segal, Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the Weizman Institute to the New York Times.

Because your gut bacteria can change very quickly based on the good and bad foods you eat, it’s more important than ever to take a probiotic, like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic or EndoMune Advanced Junior (for kids), containing multiple strains of beneficial bacteria for your good gut health.

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Take these 5 steps to prevent colon cancer

Digestive Health, Disease, Probiotics / By @drHoberman

You may recall an earlier blog post discussing colon cancer, the second leading cause of death due to cancer and the third most commonly diagnosed cancer among men and women in the United States according to the CDC.

Until recently, health experts assumed most cases of colon cancer were confined to patients over age 50. However, a report discussed at the annual Gastrointestinal Cancer Symposium predicted the incidence of colon cancer will rise dramatically among 20-34-year-olds (90 percent) and to a lesser degree among 35-49-year-olds (28 percent) by 2030.

These predictions about the sharp rise in colon cancer among younger adults are especially alarming considering how avoidable this disease really is. Following these simple steps will help reduce your risk of colon cancer and many other diseases, too.

Beat the obesity bug

The plague of obesity in America—more than a third of adults are obese—contributes to scores of health problems (stroke, heart disease, type 2 diabetes and various forms of cancers including colon cancer).

Fortunately, there are many ways to beat the obesity bug, and it doesn’t take as much time and effort on your part to make that happen.

For example, the results of a preliminary study of colon cancer patients released last summer found that eating fish less than twice a week or exercising less than an hour a week more than doubled their risks of a recurrence.

Imagine how beneficial doing those two small things alone would be for you?

Get enough calcium and vitamin D

There is good evidence that taking enough calcium and vitamin D (two of the eight supplements you need to take for your good health) can help to protect you against colon cancer. Be sure to take enough of a dose of calcium (1,000-1,200 mg) and vitamin D (1,000 IU) every day.

Cut down on red/processed meats

The link between red and processed meats and the elevated risk of colon cancer is strong, possibly due to a link with a common gene variant affecting about a third of all adults, according to a 2013 study.

The good news: Based on that same study, researchers identified another genetic variant that may lower people’s risk of colon cancer when they eat more fiber, fruit and vegetables.

For a safe baseline on eating red meat, the American Institute for Cancer Research recommends a limit of 18 ounces (cooked) per week.

Limit those lifestyle factors

When discussing how to prevent cancers, many experts lean heavily on cutting out smoking altogether and drinking alcoholic beverages to a minimum for good reason.

For colon cancer, research has pointed to changing the way nutrients are metabolized as one solid reason to reduce your consumption of alcohol, according to the American Cancer Society.

As far as the risk of smoking tobacco elevating one’s colon cancer risks, many studies have connected the dots between the two (a 2009 study cited as much as a 60 percent increase of colon cancer due to smoking).

However, the U.S. Surgeon General’s office was reluctant to make that conclusion until the most recent report released in January, spanning a half-century and 31 reports.

“Amazingly, smoking is even worse than we knew. Even after 50 years, we’re still finding new ways that smoking maims and kills people,” CDC Director Thomas Hayden told USA Today.

Take a probiotic

A 2013 study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute cited a serious cause of colon cancer: Microbial imbalances in intestinal bacteria. In fact, colon cancer patients were more likely to be depleted of some beneficial bacteria and have more “bad” bacteria linked to gut inflammation than healthy patients.

Another factor in microbial imbalances in your gut: Taking antibiotics over the long term that eliminates the good and bad bacteria in your gut indiscriminately.

The good news: Taking a multi-species probiotic like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic and EndoMune Advanced Junior (for kids) can give your immune system a much-needed boost by increasing the diversity of beneficial gut bacteria, thus protecting your health from colon cancer.

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Gut bacteria controls your weight, cholesterol levels

Diet, Digestive Health / By @drHoberman

While scientists have shown a strong connection between gut health and obesity, their research has stopped short of pinpointing the origin. Irish researchers are now closer to finding the missing link — bile salt hydrolase (BSH) — in a recent study that could explain how gut bacteria controls your weight and cholesterol levels.

Bile salt hydrolase is a protein produced by gut bacteria that alters the chemical properties of bile acids (chemicals produced in the liver that are an important component of bile secretions) in the gut.

Previous studies have shown how “bile acids work as signaling molecules in the host, almost like a hormonal network, with an ability to influence [the] host metabolism,” says co-author Dr. Cormac Gahan of the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre at University College Cork (Ireland).

This latest study concluded that increasing levels of BSH slows down weight gains as well as serum cholesterol levels in mice.

The next step in their research is looking for a human connection to this discovery. “The findings may be used as a basis for the future selection of probiotics or dietary interventions which target this mechanism to regulate weight gain or high cholesterol,” says co-author Dr. Susan Joyce.

Even better, Dr. Joyce says, “We now have the potential for matching probiotic strains with specific end-user needs.”

These latest findings go hand-in-hand with a 2013 review of studies that examined the value of BSH as cholesterol-lowering agents. Many studies concluded BSH-active bacteria were efficient in lowering low-density lipoprotein cholesterol as well as total cholesterol.

They may also explain the findings in a recent blog post that demonstrated how a healthy diversity of gut bacteria may prevent obesity and protect patients from the damage done by cardiovascular diseases, including chronic inflammation and diabetes.

The best and easiest way to maintain a diverse mix of bacteria in your gut: Take a multi-species probiotic made from multiple strains of beneficial bacteria like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic every day.

Protect the gut health and boost the immune systems of your kids by giving them a daily probiotic made just for them, like EndoMune Advanced Junior.

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Does your gut health affect obesity? Yes!

Diet, Digestive Health / By @drHoberman

You may have heard your doctor describe a health problem as multifactorial, meaning there’s more than a single issue that contributes to a condition.

For example, poor diet habits and low physical activity are two issues strongly linked to obesity. Now, you can add gut health to the list, according to a trio of recent studies.

Too many antibiotics harm your gut inside and outside

If you follow this space regularly, you’re well aware of the problems antibiotics present, especially when you rely on them too often. Exposing your body to multiple rounds of antibiotics may create an imbalance that eliminates the bad and good bacteria in your gut and leaves you susceptible to more health problems.

A Spanish study published in the journal Gut Microbes concluded the composition of gut bacteria, altered by the long-term use of antibiotics, may spur weight gains.

The continued use of antibiotics modifies the gut microbiota by increasing the activity of enzymes that lead to the faster and more imbalanced absorption of carbohydrates that may contribute to a host of food-related disorders including obesity and diabetes, according to the study.

These findings could lead to more research that targets solutions, including specialized diets and probiotic and prebiotic treatments taken along with antibiotics that protect the composition and diversity of a patient’s gut bacteria, according to Gut Microbiota Worldwatch.

Diverse bacteria in your gut may prevent obesity

As shown in previous studies, multi-species probiotics like EndoMune provide patients a more diverse variety of good gut bacteria in higher amounts that are highly effective in treating a host of health problems. That extra richness in gut bacteria may also provide protection from obesity, according to the findings in a recent Nature study.

After comparing the gut health of 169 obese Danish patients to 123 lean patients over nine years, French researchers concluded thinner folks had improved microbial diversity in their guts than did the obese participants. Leaner patients had 40 percent more gut bacteria, too.

The news wasn’t so good for patients with less microbial diversity, however. Those patients, no matter what how much they weighed, displayed more risk factors for serious diseases (cancer, type 2 diabetes and heart disease).

More to the point, a smaller study also appearing in Nature found the gut health of obese or overweight patients became richer after following a diet for just six weeks.

The good news about these studies: Improving your health inside and outside can be as simple as following a better diet regimen.

Probiotics may help women lose weight

Considering the effect an improved diet can have on gut health by itself, you’d assume taking a probiotic would be even more beneficial. But, you’d be partially correct, depending on your gender.

A Canadian research team monitoring the health of 125 overweight men and women were assigned to a 12-week diet, and half of the patients were prescribed a probiotic containing Lactobacillus rhamnosus (also contained in EndoMune), during that time.

At the end of the three-month study period, women in the probiotic group enjoyed the most success, losing nearly 10 pounds, compared to the placebo group who lost almost 6 pounds. Also, after a 12-week maintenance period, women who took a probiotic continued to lose weight while the non-probiotic women leveled off. What’s more, women in the probiotic group experienced a noticeable drop in the appetite hormone leptin.

Surprisingly, neither group of males lost much weight. “We don’t know why the probiotics didn’t have any effect on men,” says Professor Angelo Tremblay, who headed the study. “It may have been a question of dosage, or the study period may have been too short.”

One difference that may explain partly why overweight Canadian men didn’t lose much weight: The probiotic contained a single strain of beneficial bacteria versus a proven, multi-species product like EndoMune.

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How Probiotics Protect Your Heart Health

Digestive Health, Healthy Aging, Probiotics / By @drHoberman

You may already read studies showing that probiotics can provide beneficial treatment for common health conditions like acne, hay fever and even your emotions.

Did you know that maintaining a healthy balance of beneficial bacteria in your gut also protects your heart?

A pair of recent studies demonstrates how the health of your gut may provide easy-to-spot clues that can identify cardiovascular problems like heart disease, diabetes and chronic inflammation.

Probiotics vs. obesity

The bacterial diversity of your gut may be linked to your risks of obesity-related disorders, according to a Danish study that compared the health of 123 non-obese patients to 169 obese patients.

No surprise, researchers concluded the greater the amount of beneficial bacteria and the diversity of those species, the greater the protection to cardiovascular diseases, including diabetes and chronic inflammation.

On the other hand, patients with lower bacterial richness had more adipose tissue (fat), and were more vulnerable to diabetes, chronic inflammation and cardiovascular diseases.

Approximately 25 percent of the patients tested had a lower richness of gut bacteria and about 40 percent less gut bacteria genes and bacteria overall than the average patient.

These smaller amounts of bacteria found in this Danish patient group were also indicative of low-level but chronic inflammation present in the digestive tract as well as the entire body.

This low-level but persistent inflammation can also contribute to metabolic changes and boost a patient’s risks cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, according to the study.

Too much TMAO hurts your heart!

The lack of diversity of gut bacteria isn’t the only factor that affects your heart health. What foods you eat are also connected to how your gut creates chemicals that can harm your heart.

A Cleveland Clinic study uncovered a link between eating too many choline-rich foods (egg yolks and fatty meats) and the production of TMAO (trimethylene n-oxide), an natural gut byproduct and heart disease trigger that promotes the accumulation of plaque in the arteries, by gut flora.

For the first phase of the study, patients were instructed to eat two hard-boiled eggs, then take a choline capsule to show how gut flora raise TMAO levels in the blood. When the same patients were given a broad-spectrum antibiotic to suppress gut flora, TMAO levels dropped, even after taking a dose of choline pill.

During the final phase encompassing more than 4,000 patients and three years, higher TMAO levels in the blood were responsible with greater risks of death and non-fatal incidents of stroke or heart attack in patients.

Choline isn’t the substance that triggers gut flora problems. Carnitine, a similar nutrient contained in red meat, dairy products, fish, avocados and peanut butter, has also been linked to elevated TMAO production and heart attack risks.

With more health data accumulating about the ways your gut plays a bigger role in your heart health, there’s one proven and completely safe way to protect your microbiome: Take a probiotic made from multiple strains of beneficial bacteria like EndoMune Advanced Probiotic every day.

If you want to safeguard the gut health of your kids too, EndoMune Advanced Junior will help their gut health and immune systems.

Protect your heart and gut health for those you care about the most this Valentine’s Day weekend.

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Probiotics Reduce Big Gut Problems

Disease, Drug interactions, Probiotics / By @drHoberman

Obesity is a condition that affects hundreds of thousands of individuals around the world and can lead to health-related problems. A doctoral thesis published in the British Journal of Nutrition found that probiotic consumption may reduce the risk of developing obesity.

Three groups of rats were used for the study. The first group of rats were given lactobacilli plantarum, a lactic bacteria commonly found in most probiotics. The second group of rats, or the control group, were not given any bacteria or supplements. The third group was given E. Coli along with high-energy food that was given to all three test groups.

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden found that the rats that consumed lactobacilli put on less weight than the control group rats. The rats given E. Coli gained body fat and caused a change in their gut flora.

But what does this study mean for humans? There are now a number of pilot studies researching the benefits of probiotics in lessening weight gain in obese individuals.

As the holidays approach with all the parties and delicious bake goods, you may want to consider taking a high quality probiotic like EndoMune. It will help to maintain the healthy intestinal bacteria and maybe even lessen adding extra inches around the waist.

Learn more about the study and its results here.

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