Over one billion people around the world are obese, which means they have a lot of extra body weight. This extra weight can lead to serious health problems like heart disease, diabetes, and some kinds of cancer.
Losing weight and keeping it off is hard because of the way different parts of our body, like our gut, hormones, and brain, interact with each other.
A popular way to try to lose weight is by eating less on some days and normally on other days. This is called intermittent energy restriction (IER).
A team of researchers, including Dr. Qiang Zeng from the Health Management Institute of the PLA General Hospital in Beijing, did a study on this.
They found that the IER diet changes the way the brain, gut, and tiny organisms in the gut (called the gut microbiome) work together.
These changes in the gut and the brain’s addiction-related areas are connected and change over time during weight loss. Their study was published in the journal Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology.
The Study’s Process
The study involved 25 overweight people from China, with an average age of 27. They all followed the IER diet.
The researchers checked their gut microbiome by looking at their stool samples, tested their blood, and used a special brain scan called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Dr. Yongli Li, another researcher, mentioned that a balanced gut microbiome is essential for keeping a normal weight. A not-so-good gut microbiome can change the way we eat by affecting parts of the brain that deal with addiction.
The participants first went through a strict 32-day fasting phase with meals made by a dietitian. These meals had fewer and fewer calories. Then they had a 30-day phase with a little more freedom, but they still had to eat very few calories.
The Results
After the study, participants lost an average of 7.6kg (about 7.8% of their body weight). They also had less body fat, smaller waist sizes, lower blood pressure, and better levels of blood sugar, cholesterol, and liver enzymes.
This suggests that the IER diet can help reduce obesity-related health problems like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and liver issues.
The researchers saw that after the diet, there was less activity in parts of the participants’ brains that control hunger and addiction. In their gut, the amount of certain good bacteria increased a lot, while some bad bacteria decreased.
They also found that the amount of certain bacteria in the gut was linked to how active certain parts of the brain were. These brain parts are important for things like decision-making, attention, and emotions.
What This Means
These findings show that when someone loses weight, there are connected changes in the brain and the gut. It’s not clear if these changes cause each other or if something else causes both.
Dr. Xiaoning Wang, another researcher, explained that the gut microbiome talks to the brain in a complicated way. The microbiome makes things that can affect the brain, and the brain controls eating behavior and influences the gut microbiome.
Dr. Liming Wang added that the next step is to understand exactly how the gut microbiome and the brain communicate during weight loss.
They want to know which specific parts of the gut microbiome and the brain are most important for successful weight loss and maintaining a healthy weight.
If you care about blood sugar, please read studies about why blood sugar is high in the morning, and how to cook sweet potatoes without increasing blood sugar.
For more information about diabetes, please see recent studies about how to eat to prevent type 2 diabetes, and 5 vitamins that may prevent complication in diabetes.
The research findings can be found in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology.
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