As per a new study, your stomach bacteria determine which diet is best for weight reduction.
New research enables "tailored" diet advice, based on our personal gut microbiome, for persons who want to lose weight and reduce the risk of disease.
Systems biologists at Chalmers University of Technology have for the first time successfully identified in detail how some of our most common intestinal bacteria interact during metabolism. They have developed a mathematical calculation platform that makes it possible to predict how different patients will respond to a modified diet, depending on how their gut microbiome is composed.
This method allows us to begin identifying each individual bacteria type's metabolism and thus get a handle on the basic mechanisms in human metabolism, says researcher Jens Nielsen.
There can be up to 1,000 different types of bacteria and other microorganisms in the human digestive system, many of which take part in metabolism in one way or another. The composition of the human gut microbiome greatly varies between individuals, for reasons that are largely unknown.
She added that amongst other things, they have been able to demonstrate that the intestines of the individuals with low-diversity gut microbiome produce fewer amino acids when they follow this diet. This is one explanation for the improved blood chemistry.
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In the short term, Nielsen believes the research will make it easier for physicians to identify overweight patients who are at higher risk of cardiometabolic disease and could truly achieve major health benefits by modifying their diet and losing weight.
Fairly soon it should be possible to design diet recommendations that take the gut microbiome of individual patients into account. Karine Clement is already thinking along these lines and new follow up clinical experiments are being designed.
The study is published in Cell Metabolism.