Friendly Flora Reduces Abdominal Fat Following Pregnancy

The balance of power within your digestive tract has a considerable impact on your metabolism. A study of pregnant women¹ shows that taking probiotics, the friendly flora that need to be in your gut in adequate amounts, significantly reduced the risk for abdominal obesity following pregnancy.

"The results of our study, the first to demonstrate the impact of probiotics-supplemented dietary counseling on adiposity, were encouraging," said Kirsi Laitinen, nutritionist and senior lecturer at the University of Turku in Finland, who presented the results of this study at the European Congress on Obesity. "The women who got the probiotics fared best. One year after childbirth, they had the lowest levels of central obesity as well as the lowest body fat percentage."

"Central obesity, where overall obesity is combined with a particularly fat belly, is considered especially unhealthy," Laitinen said. "We found it in 25 percent of the women who had received the probiotics along with dietary counseling, compared with 43 percent in the women who received diet advice alone."

It is very clear that a “hostile” digestive situation--even milder low-grade, yet ongoing problems--is reflective of an imbalance within your digestive tract. It is now known that too many “bad guys” actually produce metabolic signals that communicate directly to your metabolism, which can result in slowing it down. While the exact details of this process are far from fully understood, it is quite clear that gut problems are associated with the risk of increased weight gain and trouble losing weight. This new study adds to the evolving body of research on this topic.

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