Especially in summer, many people ask themselves how they can save calories. Often that islow-calorie dieta healthy alternative to diets because you don't have to give up certain foods. But this diet also has disadvantages. Researchers have found that cutting calories can have a negative effect on intestinal flora.
Save calories: How does low-calorie eating affect the intestinal flora?
A new study, which was published in the journal “Nature” in June of this year, points out that the daily number of calories can influence our intestinal flora. Researchers from the University of California San Francisco examined how reduced calorie intake affected a group of 80 overweight women over the course of 16 weeks. During this period, half of the women reduced their daily calorie intake to 800 kcal, while the other half maintained their weight. After the end of the test period, the test group boosted and improved their metabolism.
However, the researchers found that the number of intestinal bacteria decreased in women who ate a low-calorie diet. At the same time, the microbiome changed. The bacterium C. difficile, which can cause inflammation of the alimentary tract and diarrhea, proliferated rapidly. The intestinal flora of the participants in the control group remained unchanged.
The researchers then colonized the intestines of laboratory mice with C. difficile and after just a few days the animals lost weight. The connection between weight loss and the bacteria was scientifically proven. However, it remained unclear why the laboratory mice did not get sick.
Normally C. difficile would be oneCause inflammation of the colon, but in the mice the inflammation was very mild. The scientists assume that when calories are reduced, the bacteria is not pathogenic, but rather plays an important role in weight loss. Which one, however, remains unclear. The head of the study, Dr. Turnbaugh explained: “We want to better understand the processes in the body. What happens when we lose weight and what consequences does a low-calorie diet have on our health?”
