Eating a tub of yoghurt or two does change the gut zoo

A tub of  yoghurt typically contains a billion or so bacteria.  A billion sounds big, but it is nothing when you consider your gut contains a hundred trillion bacteria.

So can eating yoghurt really change the gut zoo ?

The good news is they do  !  But whose in the tub is key to what they do.

Researchers fed mice a bacteria laced drink.  Some mice where fed a drink that contained  Lactobacillus paracasei, while others were loaded up with Lactobacillus rhamnosus.  The effects of the special probiotic beverage were monitored by measuring the levels of several different chemicals. 

The study showed “peeing” in the gut does change the colour of the water.  

So eating a tub of yoghurt or two will change the profile of the organisms living in your gut.  Changing who is in the zoo changes other things as well.  One of the most notable changes picked up in this study was a change in the bile acids implying that the bacteria were influencing the metabolism of fat.

So it is not unreasonable to blame your extra bulges on your bacteria. 

As the science develops expect the choice on the yoghurt isle to become a bit overwhelming.  

Picking up a tub of yoghurt will mean …….

You’ll be choosing

• the brand
• the flavour
• the volume
• whether it is low fat or full cream
• whether it is sweetened or unsweetened
• plus the particular type of  bacteria included in the product based on your health desires

Forget personalized medicine bring on personalized nutrition.

Probiotic modulation of symbiotic gut microbial–host metabolic interactions in a humanized microbiome mouse model. Molecular Systems Biology (2008) 4 (157) ; Francois-Pierre J Martin, Yulan Wang, Norbert Sprenger, Ivan K S Yap, Torbjörn Lundstedt, Per Lek, Serge Rezzi, Ziad Ramadan, Peter van Bladeren, Laurent B Fay, Sunil Kochhar, John C Lindon, Elaine Holmes & Jeremy K Nicholson

 

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Further reading

Colon cancer fat busting yoghurt coming to a supermarket shelf near you	Bacteria help keep the airways open holding back asthma	Little girls need to wallow in dirt to grow up healthy

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