Get Bacteria To Lose weight

By Devaki

Friday, March 26, 2010, 16:18

For those attending gruelling gym sessions to lose weight, here is a simple way to get rid of those extra pounds – let your gut bacteria do the hard work for you!

The new researches say that gut bacteria play a crucial role in digestion. The increasing levels of one type of human gut microbe can help people shed excess weight.

In the study, the researchers gave 87 overweight volunteers 100 grams of fermented milk - which is used to make yoghurt - twice a day, while they continued with their normal diets.

The milk drunk by half of the group was enriched with the bacteria, Lactobacillus Gasseri.

After 12 weeks, these volunteers had lost an average of 1 kilogram, while their counterparts showed no change in weight.

The people who drank the fermented milk had lost 4.6 per cent of their 'bad", visceral fat, which surrounds internal organs and is implicated in metabolic syndrome. They had also lost around 3.3 per cent of their subcutaneous fat.

Hip and waist circumference also went down by an average of 1.7 and 1.5 centimetres respectively.

The study has been published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.