Since our childhood days, we have been told by our parents & grandparents- “ you are what you eat”. They were referring to the state of our gut health. The microbes living in our gut, 38 trillion of them, have a major role to play in our metabolic conditions & determine our susceptibility of gaining excessive weight, getting obese & attracting diabetes.
Gut microbiome is responsible for regulating energy production, storage & expenditure. Therefore depending upon our composition of gut microbiome- who are there, in what proportion, who are active & what functions they perform, we may either lose weight or gain excessive weight.
Therefore, there is a direct connection between our gut microbiome & metabolic syndrome. As such, imbalance in our gut microbiome can lead to various metabolic conditions such as high sugar level, obesity, high cholesterol & high blood pressure.
If you have the wrong composition of microbes- more of one species of bacteria (even though they are beneficial ones), less of other or less of beneficial bacteria & more of pathogen & greedy ones, you may find it tough to lose weight. So if you are struggling to lose weight, unable to control your cravings, sick of following a restrictive, calorie deficit or quantified nutrition based diet & unable to figure out why no diet seems to work, probably you are pressing the wrong button till now. The root cause of weight gain &/or obesity is imbalance in gut microbiome.
So if you have tried numerous diets which do not seem to work, or if you followed a quantified nutrition diet which although helped you lose weight, but you face weight loss plateau or seem to regain weight. It is time to decode your gut & make friends with the army of microbes living in your gut.
Our gut microbes digest almost every food we eat. When they digest & metabolize the food we eat, they turn it into neurotransmitters, beneficial metabolites & compounds, hormones, vitamins & various other nutrients that help our body to grow & thrive. As such, our gut microbes play an enabler role in almost every metabolic activity. Therefore, if you have something in your food which is making one species of bacteria overgrow or even feeding pathogens & greedy folks in your gut, it can imbalance the entire composition of gut bacteria. In such a scenario, certain bacteria focus on protecting themselves from the onslaught of greedy ones & pathogens & hence would not be able to help you. This makes it tough for us to lose weight since the dominating bacteria will change the entire metabolic homeostasis.
So the question arises how you can maintain an optimum gut microbiome composition to influence your weight loss? The key operating mechanism that can help you understand your microbial pathways & either lead to weight loss or gain are discussed below:
- Short Chain Fatty Acids (SCFA) production: Ideally microbes in your gut should release these three short chain fatty acids (SCFA) in right & optimum quantity
- Buytrate: Low grade inflammation caused by gut dysbiosis induced immune response is a major contributor of weight gain & obesity. Buytrate, an essential SCFA, improves our satiety & makes us feel full, ultimately reducing overall inflammation.
- Propionate: Like Butyrate, Propionate helps in improving our satiety level & reducing inflammation, thereby enabling us to maintain a healthy weight.
- Acetate: This SCFA is a tricky one & modulates regulation of insulin levels. As we know, high insulin levels make our body store energy as fat. Acetate gives a signal to our brain to release insulin , thereby leading to weight gain.
Therefore, it is important that our microbes release all these three SCFA in the right quantity & optimum proportion. We at Genefitletics, sequence your gut microbiome & decode your current composition of these SCFA & tell you which foods are used to make these. Our UP THE GUT solution uses insights on your current structure of gut microbiome & provides you unique dietary recommendations which can alter their composition & make them work better to improve your satiety level.
- Inflammation: Inflammation is one of the major reasons for weight gain & obesity. In fact low grade inflammation. which stimulates immune reason, is the cause of every disease. Can you guess what causes Inflammation? Imbalanced state of your gut microbiome. Let us dig into this,
- Excess protein consumption: You might be consuming too much protein for your bacteria. Since our gut bacteria does not know what protein is, they ferment it & release trimethylamine(TMA) &/or ammonia( depending upon source of protein). This TMA enters into the bloodstream & taken to the liver where it is converted into TMAO. This TMAO is a harmful compound which not only causes inflammation but also increases risk of metabolic diseases. This inflammatory response can result in more fat being stored in your body. This can be causes even if you have right combination of bacterial species & strain while consuming too much protein.
- Release of toxic gases: Another reason for chronic inflammation is gut dysbiosis which makes microbes in our gut release toxin gas-lipopolysaccharides (LPS). This release of LPS makes our immune system overactive & leads to adipogenesis (creating of fat cells). Prolonged inflammation can result in leaky gut that leads to accelerated growth of LPS since it flows through the break in gut lining, thereby further increasing risk of inflammation.
We evaluate your metabolic pathways & study level of TMAO, LPS & other inflammatory toxins to provide you unique dietary recommendations that can reduce your inflammatory activity
- Gut brain axis: Our gut speaks with our brain regularly through the vagus nerve & tells the brain when & how much they want to eat through neurotransmitter signalling. It is a fact that a lot of these neurotransmitters are released by our gut. Therefore the gut signals the brain when they are hungry & when they are full. However, when you suffer from gut dysbiosis, it leads to inflammation & increases the proportion of greedy microbes. These greedy microbes are always hungry. As a result,
- They influence hormones such as Ghrelin, Leptin & other peptides that control food intake & energy expenditure. Therefore, these greedy microbes makes sure that you do not feel full when you should
- If you do not have butyrate producing microbes, it can actually impact your gut-brain control of satiety & hunger responses, thereby making you increase your food intake (more than you require) & leading to weight gain.
- These greedy microbes can actually influence regulation of genes such as Glucagon like Peptide(GLP-1) & Peptide YY(PYY) that manages our satiety level. This makes us increase our food intake & hence weight gain.
- Low microbiome diversity & high in firmicutes results in obesity. Lean people have less of firmicutes & more & diverse bacteria of phylum bacteroidetes.
Therefore, no restrictive calorie deficit, quantified nutrition or fad diet are doing to help in weight loss. What matters is unique dietary intervention that strikes at gut microbiome balance.
We, at Genefitletics, sequence your gut microbiome & evaluate your current structure of your gut to provide you unique dietary recommendations to decrease bacteria that release harmful by products & increase beneficial bacteria that release beneficial compounds. Our UP THE GUT Solution helps in regulating release of short chain fatty acids, reduce inflammation, improve gut diversity, heal leaky gut & provide fuel for your beneficial microbes, thereby improving your metabolic functions. Hop on for a free discovery call to know more.
Disclaimer: We are not a weight loss company & we do not guarantee any weight or fat loss. However, by sequencing your gut microbiome & learning how your gut impacts your energy balance, you can get exciting results & benefits out of our gut microbiome intelligence program.
Sources:
